Class 

BooL 

CopyrigM?- 



r 



COEXRIGHT PEPOSm 




Copyright 1900, By G. G. Rockwood 

THEODORE ROr)SEVEIvT 



Theodore Roosevelt 



Patriot and Statesman 



THE TRUE STORY of an IDEAL AMERICA! 



Youngest President of the United States 



A Complete Account of his Ancestry; Home Training 
Education— College Life; Political Career — As Member 
New York State Assembly, Civil Service Commis- 
sioner, Police Commissioner of New York City, 
Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Governor 
of New York, Vice-President and Presi- 
dent of the United States; His 
Military Career — Organizing the 
Famous Rough Riders, His 
Spanish War Record; 
His Literary Work, 



By ROBERT C. V. MEYERS 

Author of " World- Famous Women,'' "Victoria Queen and Empress," 
** The Story of South Africa," The Colonel's Christmas 
Morning, Etc., Etc. 



BEAUTIFULLY ILLUSTRATED 



P. ZIEGLER & CO, 

PHILADELPHIA CHICAGO 



THE LIBRARY OF 

60NG«ESS, 
Two CoHEa Received 

JAH. 13 1902 

^Co»»YRK3HT ENTRY 

CLASS ^ XXo. WO. 

COPY a 



Copyright, 1901 
by 

ROBERT C. V. MEYERS. 



PREFACE 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT, the twenty-sixth President of 
the United States, occupies a unique position in the country 
over which he presides. The youngest man who has ever 
occupied the chair of chief magistrate of the Union, his personahty 
makes him the most prominent figure in the Western hemisphere. 
'"The man and his individuahty are spoken of, but after all little is 
known about him by the general mass of readers. He has been 
before the public of his native city and State since his twenty-second 
year when he became assemblyman, while his services as colonel of 
the regiment of Rough Riders during the Spanish war made him a 
popular hero. But what of the man, his life, and the trend of affairs 
that led to his nomination for the Vice-Presidency in 1900, with 
strong indications that 1904 would see him chosen for the Presi- 
dency? The terrible crime that deprived the country of William Mc- 
Kinley while at the zenith of his fame and placed in Theodore 
Roosevelt's hands the reins of government could hardly make him 
an accidental President, for he was on the way, fully equipped, to a 
highly probable assumption of the office four years later, the whole 
political aspect pointing in his direction. That he was the organizer 
of the Rough Riders and is now President is largely what the 

majority of the people know about him, and they wish to know more. 

15 



6 



PREFACE. 



Every item concerning him is eargerly read in the newspapers, and 
stories of him are hstened to with avidity. He is endeared to the 
people for the little that is known of him, his bravery in battle and 
his thorough Americanism as the head of his party. But there are 
other sides to his character which go to make up a man perhaps the 
most remarkable the country has ever produced — a student, an 
author, a political reformer, a statesman of unquestionable ability, 
the exposition of all this must prove interesting reading to the 
millions who know so few facts concerning the man. The scope of 
this book is to present a full and authentic exposition of the varied 
parts that go to make up a character that is plain, strong, unaffected 
and fearless. Born to wealth, of exceptional abilities, from his 
earliest manhood he has gone onward with a steadiness of purpose 
that has proved in his case that wealth is no bar to action, that an 
American citizen should drop all prerogatives of social prestige and 
stand before his fellows for what he is himself, and not for what he 
has of material well being. In his short life of a little over two score 
years Theodore Roosevelt has had an experience varied as few other 
lives can boast of. The statesman of old is a statesman only, or at 
best a cultivated, gifted man who has developed his talents upon 
certain lines that have finally made for his oratory, his logic and his 
philosophy. A brave soldier may have as much said of him, or a 
politician, a reformer, and any other leader of men. But in the sub- 
ject of this volume we see first a student and author, whose writings 
stamp him as an original man in whom are excellences that lead to 
fame. Then there is the politician understanding to the fullest the 
complexities of party faction and the clarification of party spirit. 



PREFACE. 



7 



Again the statesman expounding statecraft and the relation of nation 
to nation with a simplicity and power that are rarely surpassed. Also 
the reformer, energetic in crusades against corruption in office and 
bad legislation that hamper the freedom of the citizens and keep the 
poor and defenseless in subjection. Together with these, there is 
the man of war, insisting upon his country's honor being upheld, 
patriotic in his love for the flag, and doing deeds of daring and 
bravery with the single impulse to actuate them — the duty he owes 
to the land of his birth. At the same time this man of many parts is 
a hunter, a plainsman in the great West, bringing down big game and 
teaching the meaning of civilization in explorations of the wild 
country. 

The life of such a man must mean much to those who study it. 
Such a biography as is here presented must point a lesson of im- 
portance to '!s all — that in no man are the limitations of character, 
if in the man are the incentives to excel in whatsoever his hand finds 
to do. 

The history of an exceptional man, the narration here set forth 
should impress every loyal citizen with the signal worth of the first 
n^agistrate of the United States — Theodore Roosevelt, the typical 
American of strong manly attributes. What his early years promised 
has been fulfilled, and he stands before the wwld to-day as one of 
the foremost worthies that ever shaped a nation's destiny. Un- 
affected, incorruptible, as statesman and ruler; brave and loyal as 
politician and soldier; upright and gentle as husband and father, and 
always, and preeminently so, an American of the best and highest 
type. That this biography of our President, from his youth down to 
the present day, will be of wide interest cannot be doubted. The 



8 PREFACE. 

history of the man is woven closely with the history of his times and 
the political parties of the country, and this history is here told with 
many facts heretofore not set forth in print. The book is placed 
before you; Theodore Roosevelt tells his own life in his acts ana 
deeds, and the faithful narration of these acts and deeds comprise the 
contents of a volume which it is believed will prove as entertaining 
as a story as it is valuable as a creed for true American thought and 
feeling. 



00]SrTE:N^TS 



CHAPTER 1. 

Heredity — Progenitors — Eight Generations of the Family 
Residents of New York City — Eamily of Americans — 

Great-Grandfather and the Revolution — Grand- 
father one of the Wealthiest Men in New York — Theo- 
dore Roosevelt, Sr., one of the Leading Men of his Day 
— Early Training and Outdoor Life — Harvard — 
Athlete and Student — College Men and Politics — Duty of 
Educated Men 

CHAPTER H. 

Graduated at Harvard — Entrance into Political Life^ — Mem- 
ber of New York Assembly — At Albany — Reform Char- 
ter for New York — Married — Various Honors 
as Assemblyman — Death of his Mother and his Wife — 
State Legislation — Duties of Citizens to Attend 
Primaries — Bribe-taking — ''Bosses" — Corrupt 
Politics the Fault of Citizens at Large — Machine Politics 
— Leaving the Assembly — Literary Work 

CHAPTER HL 

In the West — Ranch Life — Horse Hunting — A Roundup — 
Enjoyment of the Freedom of Outdoor Life — Activity 

on the Ranch — -Stampede of Cattle — Writer on 
the Plains — Terrible Cold — Arduous Duties of the 
Ranchman — Line Riding — ''Hamlet" in the Ranch- 
house — Winter of 1886-87 — Fine Descriptive 
Powers — News from the East — Out of Public Life, but 
Studying the Questions of the Day 

CHAPTER IV. 
Americans and Mexicans on the Plains — The "Bad Man" of 
the West — Claim-jumpers — Horse-thieves — A Noted 
Desperado — Opening a Cowboy Ball — The Frontier 



10 



CONTENTS. 



and Women — Character of the Cowboy — Indians 
— An Indian Adventure — Organizing a Troop — Loss of 
Boat — Capture of Boat-thieves and Taking them to 
the Sheriff — Dogged Determination a Character- 
istic 

CHAPTER V. 

Antelope and the Manner of Hunting Them — The Black-tail 
of the Mountains — Still-hunting — Deer Hunting with 
Hounds — Coursing Jack-rabbits, Swifts and Foxes — 
Round-horn Elks — A Hunt of Elks — Big-horn 
Sheep — Experiences with Them — Wonderful Speed — 
Habits of Bighorn Sheep — White Goats of the 
Rockies — Praise of Hunting — Instincts of Born 
Hunter — Adaptability of Character — Back to Politics 

CHAPTER VL 

Republican Candidate for Mayor — Largest Republican Vote 
for Mayor ever Polled in New York — Civil Service Com- 
mission — How he ''Ruined Himself" — Duties of Civil 
Service Commission — Abolishment of Abuses in 
PoHtics — Paper on Civil Service Reform — Case before 
LIIL Congress — In Ofhce Six Years — Resignation to 
Accept Office as Police Commissioner of New York. . 

CHAPTER VII. 

Department of Police — Augury of Defeat — No Sentiment for 
Professional Politicians^ — Enforcement of Law^s — Im- 
proving Police Force — Gaining Respect — Opposi- 
tion — Strike Leaders — Abuse Stopped — At- 
tacked by Certain Newspapers — Adverse Criticisms — 
Methods Reviled — Forging Ahead 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Tidal Wave of Reform — Blackmailing Tariff — Detectives — 
Methods of Restoring Order^ — Rewards and Punish- 
ments — Police and Citizens — Sunday Liquor Law — 
Saloonkeepers and Politicians — Report of Inter- 
views — Wealth from Corruption — Sunday Law Enforced 
— Increase of Pohce Force — Examinations — Best 
Policemen — Honest Elections — Premiums for 
Merit — Tramp Lodging-houses — Bertillon System — 
Good Results of Reform 



CONTENTS. 



11 



CHAPTER IX. 

Assistant Secretary of Navy — Foresees Spanish War — Per- 
sonnel Bill in Navy — Pushing Repairs of Ships — $800,000 
and $500,000 for Powder and Shot — Story of Old-time 
Buffalo Hunting- — Washington's Maxim — Address 
Before Naval War College — War of 1812 Recalled — Need 
of a Reconstructed Navy — Necessary to Proceed at 
Once — Stirring Peroration — War Actually Declared 
— Resignation from Naval Department — ''Roosevelt's 

Rough Riders" Organized 175 

CHAPTER X. 

The Rough Riders — Mustering Places of Regiment — Colonel 
Wood and Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt — Men from 
Colleges, Clubs, Police Force, Cowboys, Miners, 
Indians — Personnel of Some of the Men — Appre- 
ciation of Colonel Roosevelt — ''Remember the Maine" — 
Trouble in Getting Matters Organized — Drilling- 
grounds — Uniform of Rough Riders — Impatient to go 
into Action — Orders to Move 199 

CHAPTER XI. 

From San Antonio — For Tampa — On the Way — Off to Cuba 
— On Landing at Daiquiri — On the March — ''Forward" — 
General Young's Fight — Rough Riders in Battle for 
the First time — "Don't Swear, Shoot" — Death of 
Fish and Capron — Colonel Roosevelt Charges — Incidents 
— Colonel Roosevelt in Command — Army Food — 
Money for Food out of Colonel's Pocket — In Camp 
— Waiting for Santiago 219 

CHAPTER XII. 

On to Santiago — El Poso Hill — General Wheeler — El Caney 
— Through the Lane — Kettle Hill — A Ruse to get to 
the Front — The Colored Troops — ^The Catlings — In 
Charge of Parts of Six Regiments — Taking the 
Trenches — San Juan Hill Taken — Only Forward Move- 
ment of the Spanish — Acts of Gallantry — Digging 
Trenches — Opposing Forces — Waiting to Take 
Santiago 239 



12 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

Before Santiago — Men in the Trenches — Continuous Firing 
— Spanish Guerrilla Warfare — Lack of Medicine and Food 
— Red Cross Kindness — Cessation of Hostilities — 
Devotion of Rough Riders to their Colonel — Fort 
Roosevelt — Sharp-shooters — End of Truce — Fighting On 
— ^Storm and Privation^ — The Refugees — Surrender 
of Santiago — Stars and Stripes over the City — 
Return of Refugees — Helped by the Rough Riders 

CHAPTER XIV. 

SufYering of the Soldiers — Bad Commissariat — Yellow Fever 
Scare — Troops not to go Home — Meeting of Officers — 

Famous Letter to General Shafter — Troops Or- 
dered Home — On the ''Miami" — Talk to Men — At Home 
— Regiment Mascots — Present for the Colonel — Festiv- 
ities before Disbanding — Farewell to the Rough 
Riders — Incidents of the Campaign — Colonel Roosevelt's 
Estimate of his Men , , 

CHAPTER XV. 

Governor of New York — Exciting Campaign — Takes the 
Stump — Speeches — In Office — Appointments — Final Day 
of Legislature, 1899 — Pressing Measures — Original 
Methods — Tenement Houses — Needs of the Poor — 
Charities — Labor Unions — Labor Leaders — Self Flelp — 
Philanthropic Work — Young Men's Christian Associa- 
tion — Public School Teachers — College Settle- 
ments — Governor in Fullest Sense 

CHAPTER XVI. 

Convention of 1900 — Senator Hanna and Mr. Quay — Senator 
Depew — Governor Roosevelt Seconds the Motion Nom- 
inating Mr. McKinley for President — McKinley and 
Roosevelt— Tn the East we call him Teddy"— "For 
Vice-President, Theodore Roosevelt" — Colonel Young 
Nominating Roosevelt — Enthusiasm and Excitement — 
For the Campaign — Speeches — the Country Knows 
the Man — His Work and his Christian Manliness — A 
Tribute — Vice-President of the United States 



CONTENTS. 



13 



CHAPTER XVIL 

The Office of Vice-President Unique^ — History of the 
Office — Electoral College — Distrust of Party Government 
— The Vice-President's Theory of Vice-Presidency — 
Examples Cited — List of Books Written by Roose- 
velt — Address in Minnesota — Life of Effort — Right Start — 
Law and Prosperity — Amassing Eortune — Say what 
you Mean — Dealings with Cuba — Essential of Civili- 
zation — President McKinley Shot. . 337 

CHAPTER XVHL 

President McKinley at Buffalo — At the Zenith of His Fame 
— His Popularity — His Hopes — The Address at the Pan- 
American Exposition — A Famous Speech — A Farewell 
Benediction — At Niagara Falls — The Reception at 
the Exposition, September 7th — "The President is Shot!" 
— Forgiving his Assassin — Hopes of Recovery — A 
Turn for the Worse — "It is God's Way" — Last Scenes 
— The Whole World Anxious — The End not Far Off — 

September 14th — President McKinley is Dead! 361 

CHAPTER XIX. 

In the Adirondacks — Start for Buffalo — Ride Through Storm 
— At Buffalo^ — Crowds Silent — Dismisses Military Escort 
—Visit to Mrs. McKinley— The Oath of Office— Funeral 

of Mr. McKinley — Christian Manliness of Mr. 
McKinley — President Roosevelt's First Cabinet — 
Cabinet to Remain — An Estimate of Chances Made by 
a Change of Presidents — First Proclamation of Presi- 
dent Roosevelt — Young Rulers of the World — Roose- 
velt the Youngest President — No Doubt of Him 383 

CHAPTER XX. 

Home Life^ — "Tranquillity" on Oyster Bay — Rule of Simplic- 
ity — Mrs. Roosevelt — A Gracious and Good Woman — 
Ideal Wife and Mother — "$300 a Year Enough for a 
Woman to Dress On" — The Roosevelt Children — 
"Swashbuckler Americanism" — Honors conferred at Yale 
College — Resume— The Country is Assured — The Good 
Work will Go On — The President's Attitude on 
Affairs of State — The Country will Continue to Speak with 

Pride the Name of Theodore Roosevelt 4^7 



14 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER XXL 



The Negro Problem in America — Booker T. Washington, the 
Ablest Man of His Race — The Colored People to Develop 
On Their Own Lines — President Roosevelt's First 
Message to Congress — An Era of Peace and Good Feel- 
ing — Anarchy — Business Literests — Trusts — Exclusion of 
Cheap Labor — The Tariff — Reciprocity — Gold Standard 
— Hawaii, Porto Rico, Cuba — The PhiHppines — 
Monroe Doctrine — Army and Navy — Merit System — In- 
dian Tribes — Postal Service — ''Open Door" — Our 

Policy to Continue Unbroken 43 1 




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



Roosevelt as a Boy 21 

Mrs. Edith Carow Roosevelt 44 ^ 

Vice-President Roosevelt and President Milburn at Buffalo . ... 53 

President Roosevelt's Church and his Pastor 64 ^ 

Roosevelt in Hunting Costume, taken in 1885 73 ^ 

Mr. Roosevelt at Twenty-eight 84 ^ 

Roosevelt in ''Cow-Boy" Costume 93 ^ 

The First Cougar Killed 120 ^ 

Mr. Roosevelt in his Garden at Oyster Bay 129 

Mr. Roosevelt Campaigning in New York 140 ^ 

Mrs. Roosevelt and Baby Quentin 149 

Night Inspection 160 

At the Convention, Philadelphia, 1900 169 ^ 

Yale Bi-Centennial Procession 196 ^ 

The Roosevelt Children 205 

Mr. Roosevelt as Assistant Secretary of Navy 216 ^ 

A Roosevelt Family Group, taken in 1895 225 

Colonel Wood and Lieut. Colonel Roosevelt 236 ^ 

Colonel Roosevelt and his Officers. 245 

Colonel Roosevelt and his Favorite Mount, 272 

Colonel Roosevelt and Senator Wolcott 281 ^ 

Mrs. Roosevelt's Church and her Pastor 292 ^ 

Mr. McKinley and Mr. Roosevelt 301 *^ 

15 



16 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

Mr. Roosevelt arriving at the Capitol, March 4, 1901 312 

Colonel Roosevelt at Montauk Poi'nt 321 ^ 

Lieut. Colonel Roosevelt and Capt. Downes 348 ^ 

The Gubernatorial Notification Committee, 1899 357 v 

Campaigning, in 1900 368 ^ 

Vice-Presidential Notification Committee 377 

President McKinley and Vice-President Roosevelt at the Mc- 

Kinley Home, Canton, O 404 ^ 

George B. Cortelyou 413 ^ 

The Wilcox Residence, Buffalo 424 ^ 

President Roosevelt and Cabinet 433 ^ 

Governor Roosevelt at Home 444 

Booker T. Washington, A. M., LL.D 41:^ ^ 



CHAPTER 1. 



Heredity — Progenitors — Eight Generations of the Family Residents of New York 
City — Family of Americans— Great-Grandfather and the Revolution — Grand- 
father one of the Wealthiest Men in New York — Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., 
one of the Leading Men of his Day — Early Training and Outdoor Life — Har- 
vard — Athlete and Student — College Men and Politics — Duty of Educated 
Men, 



HE training of a man, according to Oliver Wendell Holm;es, 



should begin with his grandfather. If this formula be correct, 



then the training of the Twenty-sixth President of the United 
States began at the right period of time. The office of the head of 
a Republic has been said to be largely an accident, the political aspect 
of the season actuating the choice of the man, party principle pre- 
dominating over the personal excellence of the proposed executive, 
and desire to defeat the opposition making the choice of a candidate 
not so much his innate strength as that of his ability to carry out the 
lines of his party. Also, it has. been asserted that the happiest accident 
of all has been in the case of the United States, for that in nearly 
every instance the man elected to the Presidency has been a man of 
singular ability, which in times of stress has come to the fore irrespec- 
tive of party measures or party prognostications. 

Once more, it has been advanced as an incontrovertible fact that 
no American can refuse the office of President once he is assured of 
his election, that assimilation with the idea of assuming the position 
preeminent above all others in the political arena of the country 
causes a striving of every moral fiber toward such a consummation; 
and that, though weak men may have been once or twice nominated, 
the mere fact of their nomination has made them stronger. 




17 



18 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



In the case of Theodore Roosevelt the fallaciousness of more than 
one of these premises is made apparent. He was not the choice of 
any party — except as an expedient; for, on the death of a President 
the Vice-President assumes the chair; and at the time of his election 
as Vice-President he was not unduly impressed with an honor that 
might be his were direful accident to call upon his energies to assume 
the reins of government. 

That the formula of Oliver Wendell Holmes holds good in his 
case is another thing. 

Heredity, environment, education, experience in political office in 
many fields; intellectual study of the history of his country and that 
country's institutions; residence in the East and in the West; afhlia- 
tion with the South through his mother, who was a native of 
Georgia; association with men of all sorts and conditions of life — 
these go to form the basic qualifications of Theodore Roosevelt as 
President of the United States. In him is mingled the Dutch, the 
Scotch, the Irish, and the French Huguenots. From the Dutch he 
should get solidity and stabihty; from the Scotch, acuteness; from 
the Irish blood in him, aggressiveness and generosity; from the 
French, vivacity, imagination and audacity. The mingling of the 
blood of so many races surely means virility, originality, candor, in- 
telligence, integrity, daring and even balance. 

Eight generations of the family have resided in New York. From 
1652, back in the days of John DeWitt, as the head of the Dutch 
repubHc, when Klass Martenson Roosevelt left Holland and landed 
in New Amsterdam, down to the present time, the contemporary 
records of New York City under its different designatioais and 
political connections have contained the names of one or more 
Roosevelts. For two and a half centuries they have been conspicuous 
figures iij the business, social and political affairs of the American 
Metropolis. The life and environment of all these generations of 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



19 



Roosevelts must form a part of the mental and moral equipment of 
the man, who was born in New York City October 27, 1858. 

His mother was of the Bonhills, and had relatives of the name of 
Lukin and Craig — thus, the Irish and the Scotch. The Lamontaigne 
family is in his ancestry, as are also the Devoes, of Georgia and South 
Carolina. 

His maternal uncle, James D. Bullock, built the noted privateer 
Alabama; and another of the Bullocks fired the last gun aboard her. 

As to the Roosevelts, a number of them came into marked 
prominence during the Revolution. They were men of importance 
and the traditions of their ancestor, who had left the Netherlands so 
long ago to establish himself in the new world, abided with them. 
They had been British subjects, they were American citizens; they 
had accepted the form of government provided by the Crown, but 
when the mother country usurped her rights and became a tyran- 
nical despot, they were. among the first to resist injustice and to insist 
upon fair treatn>ent. The history of their family told of hardship in 
the earlier days, when Klass Roosevelt entered New Amsterdam and 
made his way; and now, when time and industry had rooted deep 
their belongings and they were an integral part of the new land, 
they, with the other colomists, rebuked the efforts of the British 
Crown to reduce them from the estate of free men, with a voice in the 
affairs of their land, into mere vassals of a country thousands of miles 
away, and which insisted upon their subserviency to the most ob- 
noxious forms of rule. The Roosevelts were foremost in being called 
"rebels" to the authority of King George. They were men of sub- 
stance; they had succeeded in what they had undertaken; they were 
of authority; and in a moment they were to be unduly taxed; they 
were to be made puppets to the Crown; they were to be brought 
down farther than any of the family had ever been. They resisted; 



20. 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



they were pleased to be called "rebels:" they were Americans, and 
America was for the Americans, and should no longer be tributary 
to a country and a King that knew no fair treatment as far as the 
colonies were concerned. 

Just previous to the \\'ar for Independence, and during its earlier 
years, Isaac Roosevelt was a member of the Xew York Provincial 
Congress. His showing in that body was to his credit, he having 
espoused the causes that should lead only to the good of the 
Colonies. Later, he sat in the State Legislature and was a member 
of the New York City Council. The measures for the advancement 
of the prosperity of what the colonists were now beginning to call 
*'our country" received his support, and he was not chary of con- 
tributing from his goodly share of this world's wealth with which 
Providence had blest him toward any advancement of the success 
of New York and her sister colonies. He enjoyed the confidence of 
his friends and the friends of the colonies, and his name was not 
confined to any district; and when he was President of the Bank of 
New York he was recognized as an astute man of business who had 
his country's honor at stake and sought to preserve that honor. 

Jacobus J. Roosevelt, great-grandfather of the subject of this 
volume, was born in 1759. and he gave his services without compen- 
sation as commissary during the AVar of Independence. He had 
amassed a fortune that was considerable for those times, and he did 
not hesitate to draw from it and give it to the struggling 
people around him, his brothers, who were striving with him 
for freedom from a galHng yoke. He had everything at stake, 
and he did not hesitate to place his life along with his worldly 
goods. The long and arduous war, the heavy duties devolving 
upon him, separation from his family, whom he scarcely knew 
were secure in his absence from them — this he took upon him- 
self with fidelity and the stubborn determination of his blood, and 




ROOSEVELT AS A BOY 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



23 



his share in the insisted-upon independence of the country was 
neither inconsiderable nor a sinecure. The story comes to us of 
Valley Forge and the freezing, starving men there, Washington 
cosiderably disconcerted, if not discouraged, and of Jacob Roosevelt 
impressing horses and other cattle to get tO' the suffering army the 
stores of food and clothing so much needed. His own privations 
were many, but he regarded himself only as another man in the army 
of untrained farmers and unmiHtary civilians, and did not spare him- 
self. The history of the times holds him in veneration, and even 
though in happier years his worldly efforts succeeded beyond his ex- 
pectations, he had gladly and willingly thrown in his lot with the 
poorest drummer-boy in the raw Continental Army, and did not hold 
himself above and beyond the lowliest. 

A brother of this Revolutionary patriot, Nicholas J. Roosevelt, 
born in New York City in 1767, was an inventor of much ability. 
He was the associate of Robert L. Livingston, John Stevens and 
Robert Fulton in developing the steamboaFand steam navigation. 

The grandfather of Theodore Roosevelt, Cornelius van Shaick 
Roosevelt, born in New York City in 1794, was an importer of hard- 
ware and plate glass, and one of the five richest men in the town, 
which was then counting its wealth in many figures. New and 
palatial buildings were going up, and an era of spending money had 
come in after the stress and hardship of unsettled times, and vessels 
were bringing to the new United States of America vast numbers of 
men and women from the old world, all anxious to achieve in the 
new surroundings what the old had denied to them. The French 
Revolution was responsible for much of the immigration, and stately 
gentlemen and fair ladies of the old regime came over with the un- 
couth element from downtrodden fields of Ireland and Germany. 

The country was prospering, banks founded on a firm basis were 
raising their walls, industries were springing up, the arts and sciences 



24 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



were receiving new impetus. The Chemical Bank of New York was 
proposed, and CorneHus Roosevelt was one of the founders of it. In 
the larger cities of the country the social life was becoming more 
prominent. ]\Iadam Washington had several years ago established a 
precedent for certain punctilios which made the General's drawing- 
rooms almost a court. Among the plainer people there was an un- 
founded fear that probably the institutions of Great Britain were 
to be introduced now that the land was free from the throne, and that 
the excess of formality accredited to General \\^ashington was to 
lead to a regimen where none but those in authority of ofhce or 
wealth would be tolerated. The women of the Roosevelt family were 
prominent in social affairs, but they and other ladies of means 
tabooed the idea of social seclusion, which was never intended by 
General AA'ashington, stickler though he might be as to etiquette. 
The Presidents Adams and their consorts were more democratic, 
and the merchants and business men of the country understood the 
trend of affairs, and the feminine portion of their households estab- 
lished a form of society which, while free from a too-open democratic 
leaning, was eligible to all who by reason of gentleness of birth, 
strength of prowess, learning, or gifts of art and success of endeavor, 
might desire to step across the threshold. The Roosevelt ladies 
were prominent in charities as well, and were not behindhand in 
hospital and prison work where the ameliorating hand of woman 
might do so much to heal the wounds of the body and spirit. 

James J. Roosevelt, a brother of Cornelius Roosevelt, was a warm 
friend and ardent admirer of Andrew Jackson, and "Old Hickory" 
was not averse to consulting him now and then. James Roosevelt 
served in the New York Legislature, and was a Justice of the 
Supreme Court of New York from 185 1 to 1859. 

A cousin of Theodore, James Henrv Roosevelt, was distinguished 
for his philanthropies, and left an estate of a million dollars, which by 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



25 



good management was doubled in value, to found the famous Roose- 
velt Hospital in New York City. Cornelius V. S. Roosevelt, the 
grandfather, married Mary Bonhill, of Philadelphia. From this 
union issued Theodore Roosevelt, the father. 

After all that is said of the ancestry of the boy who. was born in 
1858, much is owing to the father, who married Martha Bullock. 

The boy born in 1858 was early to be inducted intO' the troublous 
times of war, though too young to understand. The troubles be- 
tween the North and the South occurred when he was a child of 
tender years, and his recollection of the dreariness of those days was 
to be only the brightness of it all, when he was taken to see the 
troops depart, flags flying, drums beating and bands playing. His 
father was one of the leading men of the day, rapidly amassing a great 
fortune — for the fortunes of a hundred millions had not yet come into 
existence. The elder Theodore was a philanthropist and a lover of 
outdoor life. To him more than to any one else the boy was to be 
indebted for a system of sane living, open air exercise after tiresome 
business hours, and a leaving of heavy cares for a spell of roughing 
it with nature. Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., was prominent in devising 
and carrying out the present system of newsboys' lodging-houses. 
The homelessness of many of the waifs that thronged the city streets 
during the Civil War appealed to him, and he got other influential 
men to join him in establishing a home life for the stranded atoms 
of childhood who were thrown upon their own poor resources. 
Through the expenditure of large sums of money he helped to gather 
together the ragged untutored dispensers of ''Extras" and housed 
and fed them in comfort and cleanliness and put them on the road to 
self-respect, encouraged and protected. 

He also devised and put into operation the plan of the war-time 
allotment commission, bringing to it a keen insight and levelheaded- 
ness that stood good for the country torn by conflicting factions, 



26 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



when the issue of the struggle was uncertain, and when few of the 
foreign powers retained faith in a land that for the moment seemed 
unable to take care of itself. From his earliest childhood the young 
Theodore was taught the injunction to be active and industrious. 
His father held that no one had a right to merely cumber the earth; 
that the most contemptible of human beings was the man who did 
nothing. The child imbibed the idea that he must do something and 
do it well. During the war he was not hampered as were many of the 
children of millionaires; wdien he went to see the troops leave the city 
for the front he must walk; when he wanted a flagstaff for his flag he 
must make it. It was the beginning of his outdoor life which has had 
so much attraction for him ever since. Then came the fall of Abra- 
ham Lincoln. The boy tramped the city in company wdth whoever 
had him in charge noting the excitement, the badges of mourning; 
he noted the distress of those round him; his home was depressed, 
and the men who came to see his father were grim of visage, with few 
smiles for the little child they often encountered in the hall. These 
men would go into the library and talk long and earnestly with his 
father about panics and the money market — themes wdiich were 
meaningless to his young ears. Years and years later he was to un- 
derstand it clearly; and when he stood in the presence of the terrible 
work of another assassin's hand the earlier recollections were doubt- 
less to rise before him. Touching that same time when the boy was 
so young, it may not be out of place to recall, when the Capitol was 
afterwards somber with the mourning emblems for the man whose 
death made Theodore Roosevelt President, an incident recalling the 
assassination of President Lincoln: 

Among the many structures in Washington where symbols of grief 
have been displayed since President McKinley passed away, none 
attracts more attention than the unpretentious house at No. 516 
Tenth Street, Northwest, where Abraham Lincoln, America's first 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



27 



martyred chief magistrate, breathed his last. The emblems of mourn- 
ing, although of the simplest design, give an added significance to the 
building, which displays at its portals the inscription that makes it 
one of the most revered spots in the nation's capital. 

Over the old-fashioned doorway entrance to the principal floor, 
which is reached by a series of stone steps with a winding iron railing, 
is a festooned mass of crape which sweeps in broad bands down the 
long columns at either side of the outer vestibule and almost trails 
upon the threshold. In the central and southern windows of each of 
the main floors there depend from the sills bits of black, and through 
the panes of the windows on the main floor may be seen small flags 
trimmed with crape. In themselves these samples of the stars and 
stripes are insignificant, but they are cherished for their histories. 

Nothing could be more eloquent than the empty flag-staff pro- 
truding from the upper northern window and covered only with 
tightly-wound crape. The window directly over the main doorway 
contains no funereal bunting or other emblem, but the yellow shade 
is closely drawn and it seems particularly bare. For this reason many 
have supposed that the immortal victim of J. Wilkes Booth died in 
this room. Such is not the fact, however, for Lincoln was too griev- 
ously hurt to be carried up the narrow stair by the excited men who 
held his unconscious form. Connected with the hallway on the main 
floor, in about the centre of the building, is an ordinary sleeping- 
chamber, and to this the wounded President was borne. There he 
was laid on the bed of a lodger, a United States soldier, who im- 
mediately gave up his quarters to his dying commander-in-chief. 

There are many living in Washington and elsewhere who recall 
vividly the scenes preliminary to and attending the assassination of 
the great liberator. The close of one of the greatest conflicts in all 
history had been celebrated in the national capital on the night of 
April 13th, 1865, by an illumination of the city that excelled any 



28 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



previous demonstration held there. On that auspicious night Presi- 
dent Lincohi addressed an immense assemblage in front of the White 
House, congratulating the country upon the restoration of amity and 
the end of the bloody Civil AVar. Bands of music paraded the thor- 
oughfares, and the jubilee continued until dawn peeped over the 
eastern hills. There was no premonition of the tragedy impending. 
Jollity and congratulation held complete sway. 

The rejoicing continued the following day, and in the evening 
President and Mrs. Lincoln attended a play at the old Ford's Theatre, 
on Tenth Street, Northwest, between E and F streets. This building, 
the front of which is yet standing without change, has been re- 
modeled inside and serves as a branch of the records division of the 
War Department. To-day it flies at half-mast a ragged little flag, 
with a jagged hole near the centre. The same flag waved sadly in 
the breeze for the dead Lincoln and the martyred Garfield. It is 
one of the most treasured bits of tri-color in the city of W^ashington. 

While the performance at the old theatre was in progress on the 
evening of April 14th, Booth, who was an actor, entered the private 
box in which the chief magistrate was seated and fired the fatal shot. 
Then he jumped to the stage, shouted "Sic semper tyrannisj' fled 
through the stage entrance to an alley-way in the rear of the play- 
ho'use, mounted a waiting horse and made his escape. When it was 
realized that President Lincoln had been wounded he was hastily 
lifted by willing hands and borne out of the theatre on the Tenth 
Street side to the humble house across the way. From the moment 
that the bullet entered his body it was realized that there was no 
prospect of recovery. Airs. Lincoln and members of the Cabinet re- 
mained at the bedside in the Tenth Street house throughout that 
memorable night, when all W^ashington was in a fever of excitement 
over the crime against the President and the effort that had been 
made to stab Seward. 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



29 



As daylight drew near, the pulse of the wounded executive became 
more and more feeble. At 6.30 o'clock in the morning the public 
received the ominous bulletin, "Sinking slowly." Another bulletin 
at seven o'clock stated that the end was near. Death came at 7.22 
o'clock, while the stricken mistress of the White House, with Secre- 
taries Stanton, Wells, and Usher, and Private Secretary John Hay — 
WilHam McKinley's Secretary of State, and now next in order of 
succession to the Presidency — stood hopelessly at the bedside. The 
stillness was broken by a prayer, and then the solemn voice of 
Secretary Stanton broke the silence with, ''Now he belongs to the 
ages." 

To this humble death place of Abraham Lincoln there come each 
year thousands of pilgrims from all parts of the world. Within its 
bare rooms have been assembled many articles that figured in the 
immortal rail-splitter's career and were associated in the tragedy 
which prostrated a nation with grief. And since William McKinley 
fell beneath the bullet of an assassin the Lincoln house has become 
one of the principal sights in Washington, for the tragedy at Buffalo 
has revived and intensified the everlasting sorrow that grew out of 
the event in Ford's Theatre in April, 1865. 

The education of Young Roosevelt was undertaken upon strictly 
practical lines. He had the advantage of good schools and masters, 
but he lived the boy-life of the ordinary well-to-do youth. He was 
sturdy and strong, as often as possible in the open air, whether it was 
in the city or at his father's country house. He early developed a 
liking for animals, and his dogs and ponies were his prized com- 
panions. He began the use of the saddle at an early age and before 
he was in his teens he was acquainted with the good points of a horse 
and held colloquy with the coachman respecting the merits of the 
steeds which were his own special property. As he grew older he 
often accompanied his father on hunting expeditions, and the keen 
sorrow of his life was the death of that father in 1872. 



30 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



When 'Teddy" Roosevelt entered Harvard College he did so with- 
out any special advantages or prestige. He had a good stock of 
health and preserve strength, and believing, as his father before him 
had believed, that a sound mind is the outcome of a sound body, he 
went in for the sports that should keep up his vigor and was foremost 
in the field games. He was studious without being didactic, and he 
went through with a large amount of reading, though he seems to 
have always had time for anything else that turned up. As is the 
way of busy men, there is always time for doing whatever offers, for 
''without pause -and without haste" would seem to be the maxim of 
life, though unexpressed in so many words by those who achieve 
most in the world. 

He had early made up his mind to enter into the affairs of the 
country, as his ancestors had done before him. He believed that 
educated men were in honor bound to do their fall share of the work 
of American pubHc life. He wrote that we have in this country an 
equality of rights, and that it was the plain duty of every man to see 
that those rights were respected. Education gave no man the right 
to feel the least superiority over his fellow citizens, he said, but it 
certainly ought to make him feel that he should stand foremost in the 
honorable effort to serve the whole public by doing his duty as an 
American in the body politic. In his paper on "Colleges and Public 
Life" he says: 

"This obligation very possibly rests even more heavily upon men 
of means; but of this it is not necessary now to speak. The men of 
mere wealth never can have and never should have the capacity for 
doing good work that is possessed by the men of exceptional mental 
training; but that they may become both a laughing stock and a 
menace to the community is made unpleasantly apparent by that 
portion of the New York business and social world which is most in 
evidence in the papers." 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



31 



Educated men, he goes on to say, are bound to follow understand- 
ingly the course of public events; they are bound to try to estimate 
and form judgment upon public men; and they are bound to act in- 
telligently and effectively in support of the principles which they 
deem to be right and for the best interests of the country. An edu- 
cated man must not go into politics as such, but simply as an Ameri- 
can. But once in he must speedily understand that he must work 
hard indeed or he will be upset by some other American who has no 
education at all, but with much natural capacity. In other words, 
the educated man must realize that he is living in a democracy and 
under democratic conditions, and that he is entitled to not a bit more 
respect and consideration than his abilities can command. 

''Wrongs should be strenuously and fearlessly denounced; evil 
principles and evil men should be condemned. The politician who 
cheats or swindles, or the newspaper-man who lies in any form should 
be made to feel that he is an object of scorn for all honest men." 

In giving advice to college men, and he knew whereof he spoke, 
he denies that they are better or worse than men who have never 
been inside the walls of a college, while their responsibilities are in- 
finitely greater. 

"The worst offense that can be committed against the Republic is i 
the offense of the public man who betrays his trust; but second only ' 
to it comes the offense of the man who tries to persuade others that ' 
an honest and efficient public man is dishonest or unworthy. This ' 
is a wrong that can be committed in a great many different ways. 
Downright foul abuse may, after all, be less dangerous than incessant 
misstatements, sneers, and those half-truths, which are the meanest 
lies." 

The young college man must learn that he must deal with the mass 
of men, go out and stand shoulder to shoulder with friends and foes 
alike, and take his part in the hurly-burly of the political life, should 



32 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



he choose that for his own. No man ever really learned from books 
how to manage a govermental system. Books are admirable ad- 
juncts, and the statesman who has carefully studied them is far more 
apt to do good work than if he had not; but if he has never done any- 
thing but study books he will not be a statesman at all. At Harvard 
he was reading and thinking. He was to enter politics and he must 
needs understand the working of the government which he respected. 

"No government that cannot command the respectful support of 
thinkers is in an entirely sound condition. Each man should realize 
that he cannot do his best either in the study of politics or in the 
applied politics unless he has a working knowledge of both 
branches." 

If an educated man was not heartily American in instinct and feel- 
ing, and taste, and sympathy, he w^ould amount to nothing in Ameri- 
can public life. Patriotism, love of country, and pride in the flag might 
be feelings which the race w^ould at some period outgrow, but at 
present they were real and strong, and the man who was lacking in 
them was a useless creature, a mere encumbrance to the land. Ac- 
cording tO' his ideas, a man of sound political instincts could no more 
subscribe to the doctrine of absolute independence of party on the 
one hand than to that of unquestioning party allegiance on the other. 
No man could accomplish much unless he worked in an organization 
with others, and this organization, no matter how temporary, was a 
party for the time being. But that man was a dangerous citizen who 
so far mistook means for ends as to become servile in his devotion to 
his party, and afraid to leave it when the party went wrong. To deify 
either independence or party allegiance, merely as such, was absurd. 
The truth was, according to this creed which he laid down for the 
college man, such as was himself, that there were times when it 
might be the duty of a man to break wdth his party, and there w^ere 
other times w^hen it might be his duty to stand by his party even 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



33 



though on some points he thought that party wrong; he must be 
prepared to leave it when necessary, and he must not sacrifice his 
influence by leaving it unless it were necessary. 

"U we had no party allegiance our poUtics would become mere 
windy anarchy, and under present conditions our government could 
hardly continue at all. If we had no independence we should always 
be running the risk of the most degraded kind of despotism — the 
despotism of the party boss and the party machine." 

It was just the same as to compromises. It was a truism to say that 
in politics there was one continual compromise. Though now and 
then questions arose where a compromise was not to be thought of, 
there should be no avoidable compromise about any great moral ques- 
tion; but only a very few great reforms or great measures of any 
sort could be carried through without concessions. 

"No student of American history needs to be reminded that the 
Constitution itself is a bundle of compromises, and was adopted only 
because of this fact, and that the same thing is true of the Emanci- 
pation Proclamation." 

In conclusion, a man with a university education was in honor 
bound to take part in political life, and to do his full duty as a citizen 
by helping his fellow citizens to the extent of his power in the exercise 
of the rights of self-government. He was bound to estimate action as 
far above criticism, and to understand that the man deserving credit 
was the man who actually did the things, even though imperfectly, 
and not the man who did nothing but say how they ought to be done. 
He was bound to have a high ideal and to try to realize it, and yet 
he must make up his mind that he would never be able to get the 
highest good, and that he must devote himself with every bit of his 
energy to getting the best that he could. Finally, the college man's 
work must be disinterested and honest, and it must be given without 
regard to his personal success or failure, and without regard to the 



34 . THEODORE ROOSEVELT. ^ 

effect it might have upon his fortunes or chances; and while he must 
show the virtues of uprightness, and tolerance, and gentleness, he 
must also put forth the sterner virtues of courage, resolution and 
hardihood, along with the desire to w^ar mercilessly against the ex- 
istence of wrong. 

This is scarcely an easy creed for the aspirant to political honors, 
nor was it intended to be easy. In his room at Harvard Roosevelt 
was thinking out the problems of the government of the countrv. 
The men of his family had had to do with the affairs of America, 
and by natural inheritance he should drift that way. The feverish- 
ness of politics must not touch him, though his aggressive qualities 
should come to the fore in doing what he intended to do — he might 
fail or he might succeed, but in either event he meant to do his best 
and to truckle to no party interests. A statesman? He would be 
that if possible, and his debates at college show him to have been no 
mean speaker from the first. His voice was good, he had the address 
of a gentleman, and he was not afraid and not easily put down by 
good-natured chaff or less good-natured ridicule. He was urbane 
and natural, with pecuhar distaste for affectation and what was not 
entirely real. He took defeat well, and when routed in argument 
met his superior opponent with good nature. On the athletic field 
he felt at home, and in the various sports in which he indulged he was 
rarely second best. His summers were passed with his people or on 
hunting expeditions for as big game as could be reached. His studies 
were well prepared and he neglected little necessary work for his 
political studies and his games in the field. It is doubtful if he ever 
once lost sight of the idea that he should succeed in the political 
arena. As the day drew near when he should be graduated from 
college he looked with peculiar interest into the government of his 
own city of New York. He saw there the state of affairs that has 
characterized so many American cities that have come within the 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



35 



power of a party so strong as to have lost the idea of being over- 
thrown. The newspapers told him of malfeasance in office; of un- 
scrupulous men in seats of power; and he waited for the time when 
he, too, should have a say in the ruling of the city, and wondered how 
he should be received by those in authority. He had little of the 
timidity of the tyro; poHtics was his field; his life had that trend, 
so there could be little use in holding back or cultivating a squeamish- 
ness that rather befitted the man uncertain of himself. In all walks 
of life we encounter the disagreeable along with the agreeable, and 
while no other member of his family was in politics, and might reason 
with him to not attempt it, yet there was no reason in the world why 
a college-bred man who had read all about government, and States, 
and Kingdoms, might not take his chances in a profession which 
called for the highest, and often got the other thing — even ward 
politics. 

His father was dead — that great and good friend who had done so 
much for him — and he supposed that the law would be his forte once 
he had bid good-by to Harvard. But not to become a mere lawyer, 
satisfied with briefs and the settlement of estates — there was a wider 
field for one learned in the law — a more exciting and intricate pro- 
fession — politics — the straightening out of the mode of government 
which so easily slips into irregular hands; the settling of the tempes- 
tuous course which the ship of State must take to bring it to safe 
haven with its cargo of the people's rights for the people's needs. 



CHAPTER II. 



Graduated at Harvard — Entrance into Political Life — Member of New York 
Assembly — At Albany — Reform Charter for New York — Married — 

Various Honors as Assemblyman — Death of his Mother and his Wife — State 
Legislation — Duties of Citizens to Attend Primaries — Bribe-taking — "Bosses"— 

Corrupt Politics the Fault of Citizens at Large — Machine Politics — Leaving 
the Assembly — Literary Work. 



T the age of twenty-two, in 1880, Theodore Roosevelt was 



graduated at Harvard University. He took a European trip 



for rest before entering upon his life career. He tramped 
through Germany, his love of walking never absent from him. His 
first view of the Alps inspired him with the desire to mount them, 
and he climbed the Jungfrau and the Matterhorn. Returning to New 
York he began the study of the law, but politics called him as they 
were bound to do. 

'T have always beUeved," he has said, describing his entry into the 
political field, ''that every man should join a poHtical organization and 
should attend the primaries; that he should not be content to be 
merely governed, but should do his part of that work. So after 
leaving college I went to the local politica>l headquarters, attended 
all the meetings and took my part in whatever came up. There arose 
a revolt against the member of Assembly from that district, and I 
was nominated to succeed him, and was elected." 

It was in the fall of 1881 that he was elected from the XXI. dis- 
trict, and he was twice re-elected, serving in the legislatures of 1882, 
1883 and 1884. At Albany he found a fruitful field for the aggressive- 
ness of his nature which wrongdoing has never failed to arouse. 
Some of the veteran politicians were at first amused by his energy 




37 



38 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



and the ingenuousness and straightforwardness of his speeches. But 
they Avere speedily to discover that this ''youngster," as some one of 
them called him, was a fighter who could not be kept under either 
by open or secret methods. Few men looked less fitted for public 
life. He was well dressed, while his eyeglasses led the Tammany Hall 
members to think him effeminate. Then they learned that he was a 
good all-round boxer, and two or three encounters, in which however 
no blows were struck, convinced them that he was a courageous man. 
Though the fact that he had literary inclinations caused the opinion 
to gain ground that he was merely a writer and would take no active 
part in legislation once the novelty had w^om ofif. However, the 
new member from the XXIst soon began tO' express his sentiments, 
and the serious minded members of the Assembly began to think that 
his judgment regarding New York City matters had soundness in it. 
He was an attractive speaker, was rapid in speech, hit hard, was good 
natured, while he was savagely sarcastic in dealing with rascals, 
and public opinion outside of Albany was soon in his favor. For 
several years various attempts had been made to pass a reform 
charter for New York City. All these attempts failed, because the 
threatened departments united and were too strong for the re- 
formers. Assemblyman Roosevelt made his attacks on certain city 
departments separately, and overturned them one after another. 

His rise in rank was rapid. In the second year of his membership 
he was Republican candidate for Speaker. It was a Democratic 
House, but the honor was nevertheless great for so young a man. 
He had recently married Miss Alice Lee, of Boston, a young lady 
who believed in his abilities and wdio urged him to fresh endeavor. 

In the third year he was placed at the head of the Committee on 
Cities, for he had proved his thorough knowledge of New York and 
other cities. 

He served his constituency especially well by aiding in the passage 
of bills abolishing fees in the offices of the Register and the County 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



39 



Clerk, and while he was chairman of the Committee on Cities he intro- 
duced reform legislation which proved immensely beneficial. One 
of his measures was the act taking from the Board of Aldermen 
power to confirm or reject the appointments of the Mayor. He was 
chairman of the noted legislative investigating committee which 
bore his name, and which revealed many of the abuses existing in the 
city government in th,e early '80s. Assemblyman Roosevelt was 
highly popular with his associates, irrespective of party, and it is 
seldom a man receives more genuine expressions of sympathy than 
did he from his fellow assemblymen when his mother and his young 
wife to whom he had been married a little over a year, both died in 
one week. Attending the Republican State Convention of 1884, he 
was elected one of New York's four delegates-at-large to the Re- 
publican National Convention, as a delegate desirous of nominating 
George F. Edmunds for the Presidency. "Young Roosevelt has 
started out to reform the universe," were the words of a veteran 
member of the Assembl)/ at Albany. If this was to be his task New 
York was an appropriate place to begin it. The spasm of virtuous 
indignation which had convulsed New York when ten years eariier it 
had overthrown the Tw^eed ring had spent its force. Some of the old 
abuses had been left untouched; many oi those which had been re- 
moved had returned; in the growth in population and wealth in the 
decade many new abuses had sprung into being. In the sessions of 
1882, 1883, and 1884, in which he served, he assailed them all and cor- 
rected some. From the first his honesty and independence were 
prominent. " He refused to have to do with rings or cliques. Cor- 
ruption and dishonesty of all sorts in both parties and in every guise 
he fiercely attacked. Bosses he denounced and defied. With his first 
entrance into public life he began his career as a reformer. Me intro- 
duced the first intelligently-drawn civil service bill ever presented in 
the New York Legislature. By an odd coincidence, this was signeC 



40 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



by Governor Cleveland at nearly the same time (1883) that the civil 
service reform measure drafted by Dorman B. Eaton and cham- 
pioned by Senator George H. Pendleton passed the Republican Con- 
gress at Washington and received the signature of President Arthur. 

In his own words, few persons realize the magnitude of the in- 
terests affected by State legislation in New York. "It is no figure of 
speech to call New York the Empire State; and many of the laws 
most directly and immediately affecting its citizens are passed at 
Albany, and not at Washington." 

In truth, at Albany there was a Httle home-rule parliament which 
ruled much of the destiny of a commonwealth more dense in popula- 
tion than any one of two-thirds of the European kingdoms, and 
one which in regard to wealth, material prosperity, variety of in- 
terests, extent of territory, and capacity for expansion can truthfully 
be said to rank next to the powers of the first class. 

Among his colleagues there w^ere many good men; there was also 
a class of men that were not very good nor very bad, but went one 
way or the other according to the strength of the various conflicting 
influences brought to bear around, behind and upon them. 

"Where a number of men, many of them poor, some of them un- 
scrupulous, and others elected by constituents too ignorant to hold 
them to a proper accountability for their actions, are put into a 
position of great temporary power, where they are called to take 
action upon questions affecting the welfare of large corporations and 
wealthy private individuals, the chances for corruption are always 
great; and that there is much viciousness and political dishonesty, 
much moral cowardice, and a good deal of actual bribe taking in 
Albany, no one who has had any practical experience of legislation 
can doubt; but, at the same time, I think that the good members 
generally outnumber the bad, and that there is not often doubt as 
to the result when a naked question of right or wrong can be placed 
clearly and in its true light before the Legislature." 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



41 



Regarding bribe-taking, in each of the three Legislatures there 
were certain men who were interested in getting through measures 
which they thought to be for the public good, but which were certain 
to be strongly opposed — some for poHtical, some for money reasons. 

"To get through any such measure requires genuine hard work, 
a certain amount of parliamentary skill, a good deal of tact and 
courage, and above all a thorough knowledge of the men with whom 
one has to deal, and of the motives which actuate them. In other 
words, before taking any active steps we had to 'size up' our fellow 
legislators to find out their past history and present character and 
associates; to find out whether they were their own masters or were 
acting under the directions of somebody else; whether they were 
bright or stupid, etc., etc. As a result, and after very careful study 
conducted purely with the object of learning the truth so that we 
might work more efifectually, we came to the conclusion that about 
a third of the members were open to corrupt influences in some form 
or other; in certain sessions the proportion was greater, and in some 
less. Now it would of course be impossible for me or any one else 
to prove in a court of law that these men were guilty, except per- 
haps in one or two cases; yet we felt absolutely confident that there 
was hardly a case in which our judgment as to the honesty of any 
given member was not correct. The two or three exceptional cases 
alluded to, where legal proof of guilt might have been forthcoming, 
were instances in which honest men were approached by their col- 
leagues at times when the need for votes was very great; but even then 
it would have been almost impossible to punish the offenders before 
a court, for it would have merely resulted in his denying what his 
accuser stated. Moreover, the members who had been approached 
would have been very reluctant to come forward, for each of them 
felt ashamed that his character should not have been well enough 
known to prevent any one daring to speak to him on such a subject. 



42 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



And another reason why the few honest men who are approached (for 
the lobbyist rarely makes a mistake in his estimate of the men who 
will be apt to take bribes) do not feel like taking action in the matter 
is that a doubtful lawsuit will certainly follow,, which will drag on so 
long that the public will come to regard all the participants with equal 
distrust, while in the end the decision is quite as likely to be against 
as to be for them.'' 

Thus, it vrould seem, it is almost beyond possibility to actually 
convict a legislator of bribe-taking, though at the same time the true 
character of a legislator soon becomes known, and no dishonest man 
can long keep his reputation good among those who are honest. 

Roosevelt, as reformer, knew what was going on around him. 
Hobnobbing with all sorts and conditions of men, making impas- 
sioned speeches, he was acquainted with the men with whom he 
associated and who listened to the words he had to say. Corruption 
in office angered him thoroughly and he says: 

"3vluch the largest percentage of corrupt legislators come from the 
great cities; indeed, the majority of Assemblymen from the great 
cities are 'very poor specimens ;' while on the contrary the Congress- 
men vrho go from them are generally pretty good men. This fact is 
only one of the many that goes to establish the curious political 
law that in a great city the larger the constituency which elects a 
public servant, the more apt that servant is to be a good one; exactly 
as the ]\Iayor is almost certain to be infinitely superior in character 
to the average Alderman, or the average city Judge to the aver- 
age city Justice. This is because the public ser\'ants of com- 
paratively small importance are protected by their o^^^l insignifi- 
cance from the consequences of their bad actions. Life is car- 
ried on at such a high pressure in the great cities, men's time 
is so fully occupied by their manifold and harassing in- 
terests and duties, and their knowledge of their neighbors is neces- 



MRS. EDITH CAROW ROOSKVEIyT 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



45 



sarily so limited, that they are only able to fix in their minds the 
characters and records of a few prominent men; the others they lump 
together without distinguishing between individuals. They know 
whether the- Aldermen as a body are to be admired or despised; but 
they probably do not even know the name, far less the worth, of the 
particular Alderman who represents their district; so it happens that 
their votes for Aldermen and Assemblymen are generally given with 
very Httle intelligence indeed, while on the contrary they are fully 
competent to pass and execute judgment upon as prominent an 
'ofificial as a Mayor or even a Congressman. Hence it follows that the 
latter have to give a good deal of attention to the wishes and pre- 
judices of the public at large, while a city Assemblyman, though he 
always talks a great deal about the people, rarely, except in certain 
extraordinary cases, has to pay much heed to their wants. His 
political future depends far more upon the skill and success with 
which he cultivates the good will of certain 'bosses,' or of certain 
cliques of politicians, or even of certain bodies and knots of men 
(such as compose a trade-union, or a collection of merchants in some 
special business, or the managers of a railroad) whose interests, 
being vitally affected by State legislation, oblige them closely to 
watch and try to punish or reward the State legislators. These 
politicians or sets of interested individuals generally care very little 
for a man's honesty so long as he can be depended upon to do as 
they wish on certain occasions; and hence it often happens that a 
dishonest man who has sense enough not to excite attention by any 
flagrant outrage may continue for a number of years to represent an 
honest constituency." 

How could a man using such language be popular among men 
who went into politics for the money to be gained by the move? 
Roosevelt had many opponents and made such opponents uncom- 
fortable by his stubborn determination and his ability to show fight. 



■46 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



He was above suspicion as a place-seeker, though it was known from 
the first that he intended to try for rulership in poHtics; his methods 
were too unpopular for the dishonest ruler, and they believed that 
they controlled the majority. His fortune saved him from the 
opprobrium of acting for mere effect, so that, at the proper time, he 
might swell his bank account by some bold stroke. He was begin- 
ning to be regarded as a statesman and an honest politician, and as 
such he was unbeloved by the class of men who at first had looked 
leniently upon him because of his well-fitting garments, his eye- 
glasses, and his Hterary proclivities. 

On one occasion there came before a committee, of which Mr. 
Roosevelt was a member, a perfectly proper bill in the interest of a 
certain corporation; the majority of the committee, six in number, 
were unscrupulous men who opposed the measure in the hope of 
being paid money to end their opposition. Mr. Roosevelt had con- 
sented to take charge of the bill. When he did so he had stipulated 
that not a penny should be expended to insure its passage. It there- 
fore became necessary to see what pressure could be brought to bear 
on the recalcitrant members of the committee, and accordingly the 
minority had to find out who were the sponsors of the political ex- 
istence of these men. Three were found to be under the control of 
local "statesmen" of the same party as themselves, and of equally 
shady moral character; one was ruled by a politician of unsavor}^ 
reputation; the fifth, a Democrat, was owned by a Republican Federal 
ofBcial; while the president of a city railway company controlled the 
sixth. A couple of letters from these two magnates forced the last 
mentioned members to change front, and Mr. Roosevelt's friends 
carried the measure. 

In his paper on 'Thases of State Legislation" he says: 
''There are two classes of cases in which corrupt members get 
money. One is when a wealthy corporation buys through some 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



47 



measure which will be of great benefit to itself, although perhaps an 
injury to the public at large; the other is when a member introduces 
a bill hostile to some moneyed interest with the expectation of being 
paid to let the matter drop. The latter, technically called a 'strike/ 
is much the more common; for in spite of the outcry against them in 
legislative matters, corporations are more often sinned against than 
sinning. It is difficult for reasons already stated to convict the 
offending member, though we have very good laws against bribery. 
The reform has got to come from the people at large. It will be hard 
to make any great improvement in the character of the legislators 
until respectable people become fully awake to their duties, and' until 
the newspapers become more truthful and less reckless in their state- 
ments." But ''there is a much brighter side to the picture — and this 
is the larger side, too. It would be impossible to get together a body 
of more earnest, upright and disinterested men than the band of 
legislators, largely young men who" (during the three years he was 
in office) "have averted so much evil and accomplished so much good 
at Albany. ^ ^ ^ This body of legislators who, at any rate, 
worked honestly for what they thought right, were as a whole quite 
unselfish and were not treated particularly well by their constituents. 
Most of them soon got to realize the fact that if they wished to enjoy 
their brief space of political life they would have to make it a rule 
never to consider, in deciding how to vote on any question, how their 
vote v\'Ould affect their own political prospects." 

But the people had themselves to blame for a state of aft'airs need- 
ing such signal reformation. It is generally acknowledged that the 
people in the large cities of the Union have neglected their political 
duties. In consequence they have been regarded with contempt by 
the professional politicians. A number of people will get together, 
hire a hall and call a meeting, when they will cry "reform," and then 
disband apparently under the belief that they have done their duty as 



48 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



citizens and members of the community. While he was in the State 
Legislature ^Mr. Roosevelt asserted that four out of everv' five of our 
wealthy and educated men were really ignorant of the nature of 
a caucus or a primary meeting, and never attend either. 

''Under our form of government, no man can accomplish anything 
by himself — he must work in combination with others, -'r^ ^ ^ 
But there seems often to be a certain lack of the robuster virtues in 
our educated men which makes them shrink from the struggle and 
the inevitable contact with rough politicians (who must often be 
rudely handled before they can be forced to behave); while 
their lack of familiarity with their surroundings causes them 
to lack discrimination between the politicians who are decent 
and those who are not; for in their eyes the two classes both 
equally unfamiliar, are indistinguishable. Another reason why 
this class is not of more consequence in politics is that it is 
often really out of sympathy — or, at least, its more conspicuous 
members are — with the feelings and interests of the great mass of 
American people; and it' is a discreditable fact that it is in this class 
that what has been most aptly termed the 'colonial' spirit still sur- 
vives. ^ ^ From difYerent causes the laboring classes even 
when thoroughly honest at heart often fail to appreciate honesty in 
their representatives. They are frequently not well informed in re- 
gard to the character of the latter, and they are apt to be led aside by 
the loud professions of the so-called labor reformers who are always 
promising to procure by legislation the advantages which can only 
come to workingmen, or to any other men, by their individual or 
united energy, intelligence and forethought. Very much has been 
accomplished by legislation for laboring men by procuring mechanics' 
lien laws, factory laws, etc.; and hence it often comes that they think 
legislation can accomplish all things for them; and it is only natural, 
for instance, that a certain proportion of their number should adhere 



PATRIOT AND. STATESMAN. 49 

to the demagogue who votes for a law to double the rate of wages, 
rather than to the honest man who opposes it. When people are 
struggling for the necessaries of existence and vaguely feel, no matter 
how wrongly, that they are also struggling against an unjustty- 
ordered system of life, it is hard to convince them of the truth that 
an ounce of performance on their own part is worth a ton of legisla- 
tive promises to change in some mysterious manner that life-system." 

Mr. Roosevelt would have every man in the United States under- 
stand politics and take his part in the government of the country by 
such understanding. He had little sympathy with those who com- 
plained of bad representatation when they took no initiative to pro- 
tect themselves from it. Rich men and poor men equally possess the 
inalienable right of having a voice in the affairs of the country, and 
the careless man or the laggard has little right to protest against a 
state of afifairs brought on by utter heedlessness in relegating their 
privileges to tricksters and knaves. From the first he advocated the 
study of politics by all classes, and could not undestand the blind 
obedience to leaders freely indulged in by men of every social grade. 
He is particularly hard on the educated man and the man of wealth. 
Education should teach thought, and wealth grants the ease wherein 
thought may crystallize; education should be used for the benefit of 
those debarred from it by stress of circumstance, and wealth should 
be expended for the best good of those who have it not. These 
democratic principles he put into speech on all occasions and never 
so well as when he was prominent in State legislation; and, he insists, 
when a man is heard objecting to taking part in politics because it 
is ''low," that man may be set down as either a fool or a coward — it 
would be quite as sensible for a militiaman to advance the same plea 
in refusing to assist in putting down a riot. He has something to say 
regarding machine politics: 

"The terms 'machine' and 'machine politician' are now undoubt- 
edly used ordinarily in a reproachful sense; but it does not follow that 



50 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



this sense is always the right one. On the contrary the machine is 
often a very powerful instrument for good; and a machine politician 
really desirious of doing honest work on behalf of the community 
is fifty times as useful as a philanthropic outsider. ^ ^ Ij-^ the 
rough, however, the feeling against machine politics and politicians 
IS tolerably well justified by the facts, although this statement really 
reflects most severely upon the educated and honest people who 
largely hold themselves aloof from public life and show a curious inca- 
pacity for fulfilling their public duties. The organizations that are 
commonly and distinctly known as machines are those belonging to 
the two great recognized parties or to their factional subdivisions; 
and the reason why the word machine has come to be used, to a 
certain extent, as a term of opprobrium is to be found in the fact that 
these organizations are now run by the leaders very largely as busi- 
ness concerns to benefit themselves and their followers, with little 
regard to the community at large. This is aiatural enough. The 
men having the control and doing all the work have gradually come 
to have the same feeling about politics that other men have about the 
business of a merchant or manufacturer; it was too much to expect 
that if left entirely to themselves they would continue disinterestedly 
to work for the benefit of others. ]\Iany a machine poHtician who is 
to-day a most unwholesome influence in our politics is in private life 
quite as respectable as any one else; only he has forgotten that his 
business affects the State at large, and regarding it as merely his own 
private concern he has carried into it the same selfish spirit that 
actuates in business matters the majority of the average mercantile 
community. A merchant or manufacturer works his business as a 
rule purely for his own benefit, without any regard whatever for the 
community at large. The merchant uses all his influence for a low 
tarift, and the manufacturer is even more strenuously in favor of 
protection — not at all upon any theory of abstract right, but because 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



51 



of self-interest. Each views such a political question as the tariff not 
from the standpoint of how it will affect the nation as a whole, but 
merely from that of how it will affect him personally. If a com- 
munity were in favor of protection, but nevertheless permitted all the 
govermental machinery to fall into the hands of importing merchants, 
it would be small cause for wonder if the latter shaped the laws to 
suit themselves, and the chief blame, after all, would rest wath the 
supine and lethargic majority which failed to have enough energy 
* to take charge of their own affairs. Our machine politicians in 
actual life are in just this same way; their actions are very often dic- 
tated by selfish motives, with but little regard for the people at large, 
though like the merchants they often hold a very high standard of 
honor on certain points; they therefore need to be continually 
watched and opposed by those who wish to see good government. 
But, after all, it is hardly to be wondered at that they abuse power 
which is allowed to fall into their hands owing to the ignorance or 
timid indifference of those who by rights should themselves keep it." 

Always he keeps on insisting in his science of politics that the 
people are themselves responsible for whatever form of government 
they are under — if there is a miscarriage of justice the people must 
look to themselves for the cause; if there be chicanery and villainy 
in office, blame not the officeholders so much as the citizens who sat 
by and saw such men placed in authority. 

He was the youngest man in the State Legislature and his youth 
was not a plea for arrogance. He was a man and a politician in the 
best sense of the word; he saw the affairs of his city and State dragged 
from their lofty pedestal and brought too often into the lower strata 
of foulness at the hands of unprincipled neophytes. He condemned 
much, but with singular philisophy he refused to condemn the actual 
perpetrators of the wrongs, concluding that the tacit consent of the 



5^ 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



rest of the community was the real wrong-doing. His enemies re- 
spected him, and he was good-natured even when he was hardest 
with those he opposed. He had no respect for the boss in poUtics, 
and yet he did not entirely blame the boss for taking the spoils that 
were ready at his hand while those who called themselves the real 
owners made no outcry. 

Mr. Roosevelt was now deep in the sea of affairs and he was ac- 
counted by all parties as a rising man. Perhaps he was regarded with 
suspicion by the pot-house politician who could not understand why 
"Teddy with the kid gloves" and a bank account should wish to mix 
up with things that had always gone well enough without him, and 
would be all the same a hundred years hence. "Teddy with the kid 
gloves" may have thought that there was not going to he any 
hundred years hence for him. and that what had gone well enough 
without him was not going well enough with him, unless he pro- 
pelled it a little by his efforts. There is little that can be said in his 
disfavor in any political question he advocated, and his voice, while 
raised in angry protest against some iniquitous measure proposed by 
the bosses or their henchmen, had still a kindly tone in it for the 
machine man who. through ignorance, did as he was told without 
asking why he did it. 

Mr. Roosevelt's father had left a considerable estate, and the man- 
agement of this largely devolved upon the young Assemblyman. 
He kept up his friendly interest in Xew York social life, and always 
the well-being of the city that had engaged the thought of a long 
line of his progenitors was near his heart. His love for animals kept 
around him his dogs and his horses, and his gun was ever ready when 
he could spare the time for a trip away from the hurly-burly of 
politics, when he might have a month or two in the open air, which 
was his medicine and his strength. Then he would be back again 
in the midst of the fray, belligerent if need be, taking his part and 



m 

w 

a 

m 

o 
o 

' <: 

> t 

^ 6 
o c 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



55 



asking for no quarter. His wife had left him a Httle daughter, Alice, 
and she was very dear to him. In his country quarters during the 
summer his daughter was with him — still very young, for the father, 
too, was young — and his domestic tastes were even then evidenced 
in his love of home and homely life. And yet "America for the 
Americans" was his creed, and even then he was perhaps as good a 
specimen of the American, pure and simple, as the country has called 
forth. The various Anglicized fads that were springing up in the 
country found Httle sympathy with him — only the sports of all 
countries, the manly feats of field and saddle, were of interest to him 
as devoloping brain and muscle so much needed in an age when 
ofifice and counting-house draw away too much good red blood in 
the effort to accumulate the yellow fever called gold. 

In 1884 his term in the Assembly came to an end and he retired, 
for the time being, to private life. His library and his literary pur- 
suits called him, and, a good friend to himself, his home and healthful 
enjoyments were a Mecca after the fever of the three years at Albany. 
The year after he left college he published his ''Naval War of 18 12," 
and now he set about writing the "Life of Thomas H. Benton," which 
was issued in 1886, the year when he married a second time. 



CHAPTER III. 



In tlie West — Ranch Life — Horse Hunting — A Roundup — Enjoyment of the 
Freedom of Outdoor Life — Activity on the Ranch — Stampede of Cattle — 

Writer on the Plains — Terrible Cold — Arduous Duties of the Ranchman — 
Line Riding — "Hamlet" in the Ranch-house — Winter of 1886-87 — Fine De- 
scriptive Powers — News from the East — Out of Public Life, but Studying 
the Questions of the Day. 

rr^ HE ''impetuous" Theodore Roosevelt, as many called him, the 



man who was bound to ''ruin" his chances by his irritable 



displays of annoyance when dishonest politics thrust them- 
selves into view, when he was no longer in the Assembly wrote his 
books and found time to ranch in the far West, to hunt big game in 
the Rocky Mountains and on the plains. He took in a stock of 
sturdy health before he again made an appearance in public life. His 
home ranch lay on both sides of the Little Missouri, N. D., where 
deer and other game abounded. There w^as horse hunting as well, 
and the New Yorker entered into the rude life around him with the 
same enthusiasm with which he entered every phase of life the years 
brought him. He lived in the open air, a ranchman on the Western 
plains, making friendships with the rude men in the vicinity, taking 
long rides, assisting in round ups of vicious cattle, and whatever 
offered. In his book Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail, he speaks; of 
a round up. The plain where a round up is taking place is on a 
level bottom of the bend of the river which here and there made an 
almost semi-circular sweep. The wagons were caraped among the 
cotton wood trees fringing the river. The horses were grazing on the 
outskirts. In the great corral toward one end the men w^ere branding 
calves, while the whole middle of the bottom was occupied by lowing 
cattle and shouting, galloping cow-boys. 




57 



58 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



"As soon as, or even before, the last circle riders have come in and 
have snatched a few has.ty mouthfuls to serve as their midday meal, 
we begin to work the herd — or herds, if the one herd should be of 
too unwieldly size. The animals are held in a compact bunch, most 
of the riders forming a ring outside, while a couple from each ranch 
successively look the herds through and cut out those marked 
with their own brand. * * To do good work in cutting out 
from a herd, not only should the rider be a good horseman, but he 
should also have a skillful, thoroughly trained horse. * >i< * in 
cutting out a cow and a calf two men have to work together. As the 
animals of a brand are cut aut they are received and held apart by 
some rider detailed for the purpose, who is said to be 'holding the 
cut.' All this time the men holding the herd have their hands full, 
for some animal is continually trying to break out, when the nearest 
man Hies at it at once and soon brings it back to its fellows. As soyon 
as all the cows, calves, and whatever else is being gathered have been 
cut out the rest are driven clear off the ground and turned loose, 
being headed in the direction contrary to. that in which we travel 
in the following day. Then the riders surround the next herd, the 
m-en holding cuts move them up nearer, and the work is begun anew, 
^ ^ As soon as the. brands of cattle are worked and the animals 
that are to be driven a.long are put in the day herd, attention is turned 
to the cows and calves which are already gathered in different bands, 
consisting each of all the cows of a certain brand and all the cows 
that are following them. If there is a corral each band is in turn 
driven into, it; if there is none a ring of riders does duty in its place. 
A fire is built, the irons heated, and a dozen men dismount to, as it 
is called, 'wrestle' the calves. The best twa ropers go in on their 
horses to catch the latter; one man keeps tally, a couple put on the 
brands, and the others seize, throw and hold the little unfortunates. 
^ ^ ^ there are seventy or eighty calves in a corral the scene 



PATRIOT AND STATES-MAN. 



is one of the greatest confusion. The ropers spurring and checking 
the fierce Httle Texan horses drag the calves up so quickly that a 
dozen men can hardly hold them; the men with the irons, blackened 
with soot, run to and fro; the calf-wrestlers, grimy with blood, dust 
and sweat, w^ork like beavers; while with the voice of a stentor the 
tally-man shouts out the number and sex of each calf. The dust 
rises in clouds, and the shouts, cheers, curses and laughter of the 
men rmite with the lowing of the cows and the frantic bleating of the 
roped calves to make a perfect Babel. Now and then an old cow 
turns vicious and puts every one out of the corral. Or a maverick 
bull — that is, an unbranded bull, — a yearling or a two-years old, is 
caught, thrown and branded; when he is let up there is sure to be 
a fine scatter. Down goes his head, and he bolts at the nearest man 
who makes out of the way at top speed amidst roars of laughter from 
all of his companions; while the men holding dow^n calves swear 
savagely' as they dodge charging mavericks, trampling horses, and 
taut lariats with frantic plunging Httle beasts at the farther ends." 
Mr. Roosevelt, taking part in such wild scenes goes on to describe 
that on the following morning after this day of rounding-up certain 
drivers are detached to guard and drive the day herd, the men being 
on duty from four in the morning till eight in the evening — think of 
that, you city workers complaining of hard working hours! When 
the herd reaches the camping ground there is little to do but loll in 
the blazing sun watching the cattle feed and sleep, taking care that 
they do not spread out too much. Then, plodding along, slowly, 
monotonously, is not very inspiriting w^ork. The cattle are strung 
out in long lines,*' the swiftest take the lead in single file, w^hile the 
weaker and the young calves and the cows bring up the rear. Two 
men travel along with the leaders, one on each side, to point them in 
the right direction, one or two others keeping by the flanks, and the 
rest in the rear to hurry up the wxaklings. This may be very tame 



60 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



and irksome, but Mr. Rooseveit was often in at the fight when there 
were flurries of excitement, as when two or three circle riders came 
unexpectedly over a butte where was a bunch of cattle which at once 
started for the day herd, and there was excited riding hither and 
thither to keep them out. Or when the cattle began to run and 
crowded all tog"ether in a mass like a ball, moving round and round 
trying to keep their heads toward the center and refusing to leave it. 

From eight in the evening till four in the morning the herd became 
a night herd. Each wagon in succession guards it for a night, 
dividing the time into watches of two hours each, a couple of riders 
taking each watch. The first and the last watches are the preferred 
ones; the others are voted disagreeable, as the men have to turn out 
cold and sleepy. 

]\Ir. Roosevelt en«joyed the freedom of the life round him (he was 
free from political life) and with the adaptability that has usually 
characterized him. Hardship was not the thing it might be supposed 
to be by those who knew him in social life in New York, or by those 
who in the earlier days of his career remarked on his well tailored 
figure and his eye-glasses. With a sort of exultation he writes of a 
partv, of which he was a member, being thirty-six hours in the saddle, 
dismounting onlv to chansfe horses and to eat. Thev were almost 
worn out at the end of the time. Again, he and some others were 
once bringing a thousand head of young cattle down to ]\Ir. Roose- 
velt's lower ranch, and as the river was high they were obliged to 
take the inland trail. The third night they were forced to make a 
dry camp, the cattle having had no water since morning. But they 
got them bedded down, and one of the cow-boys and Mr. Roose- 
velt stood first guard. Soon after night had fallen the thirsty beasts 
of one accord got to their feet and tried to break out. The only 
salvation was to keep them close together, for if they once got 
scattered they could never be gathered again. Roosevelt kept on 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



61 



one side, the cow-boy on the other, and never in their lives before 
did these two men ride so hard. In the darkness the erstwhile mem- 
ber of the New York Assembly could but dimly see the shadowy 
outlines of the herd, as with whip and spurs he urged his pony along 
its edge, turning back the beasts at one point barely in time to 
wheel and keep them in at another. The ground was cut up by many 
little gullies and the men got numerous falls, horses and riders turn- 
ing complete somersaults. They dripped with perspiration, and the 
ponies were quivering and trembling, but the herd was finally 
brought out of the stampede. 

On another occasion, while with the round-up, the amateur herds- 
man was spared an unpleasant night only because there happened to 
be a couple of great corrals a mile or so away. It had been raining 
heavily all day long, and the men were drenched. Toward evening 
the rain slackened somewhat and the day herd, which was a very 
large one of some two thousand head, was gathered on an open 
bottom. The horses had been turned loose, and the men in oilskins 
cowered wet and uncomfortable under the lee of a wagon, making 
a supper of damp bread and lukewarm tea. Suddenly the wind arose 
in quick, sharp gusts, and in a little while a blizzard was raging, 
driving the rain in stinging level sheets before it. Just as the men 
were preparing to turn into bed with the prospect before them of a 
night of chilly misery a man sang out: 'T guess there's 'racing and 
chasing on Cannobie Lea' now, sure." Following this man's gaze 
Mr. Roosevelt saw that the cattle had began to drift before the storm, 
the night guards being unable to cope with them, while at the other 
wagons riders were saddling in hot haste and spurring off to the 
beasts' help in the blinding rain. Mr. Roosevelt ran at once to his 
own saddle. All the ponies were standing together, heads down, 
tails to the wind. They were wild and restless enough at all times, 
but the storm had cowed them and the men were able to catch them 



62 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



without either rope or halter. In no time each man was ready, and 
away they went, splashing and slipping in the pools of water that 
studded the muddy plain. Most of the riders were already out when 
Roosevelt arrived. The cattle were gathered in a compact fan-shaped 
mass with their tails toward the thin end of the fan. In front of this 
mass of maddened, frightened beasts was a long mass of cowboys. 
When the cattle quieted for a moment every horseman turned round 
with his back to the wind. Then, if the cattle spread out or made a 
rush, the men shouted and swayed in their saddles, darting to and fro, , 
utterly heedless of danger, now checking and wheeling their horses so 
sharply as to bring them to their haunches or even throw them flat 
down, until after some minutes of this mad galloping the herd, which 
had drifted a hundred yards or so, would be once more brought up 
standing. The thunder was terrific, and at every thunderclap the 
cattle would try to break away. It grew harder and harder to hold in 
the herd; but the drift of the cattle took the men along to the corrals, 
already mentioned, the entrances to which were fortunately to the 
windward. As soon as the first corral was reached the riders cut off 
part of the herd and turned it inside. Doing this again, they put 
another part of the herd in the second corral. A third corral was at 
hand, and into this the remaining cattle were put. The moment the 
cattle were provided for, almost all of the horsemen started back 
full speed for the wagons, Roosevelt and the others, barely waiting 
to put up the bars and make the corrals secure, hurrying after them. 
All animals were benumbed by this gale of cold rain. A prairie 
chicken rose from imder Roosevelt's horse's feet and went heavily 
along, while a jack rabbit barely escaped being trodden on. 

''But though there is much work and hardship, rough fare and 
monotony, and exposure connected with the round-up," says Mr. 
Roosevelt, "yet there are few men who do not look forward to it and 
back to it with pleasure. The only fault to be found is that the hours 




PRE^SIDBNT ROOSE^VElvT'S CHURCH AND HIS PASTOR 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



65 



of work are so long that one does not usually have enough time to 
sleep. The food, if rough, is good — beef, bread, pork, beans, coffee 
or tea, always canned tomatoes, and often rice, canned corn, or sauce 
made from dried apples. The men are good-humored, bold and 
thoroughly interested in their business, continually vying with one 
another in the effort to see which can do the best work. It is 
superbly health-giving and is full of excitement and adventure, calling 
for the exhibition of pluck, self-reliance, hardihood and dashing 
horsemanship; and of all forms of physical labor, the easiest and 
pleasantest is to sit in the saddle." And Mr. Roosevelt has always 
appreciated in the men with whom he has been brought into contact 
in public life those very same qualities — pluck, self-reliance and 
hardihood. 

Summer on the plains was in the open, but winter was a different 
story. Then all the land was changed into a place of grim desolation. 
Furious gales blew from the North, carrying with them the blinding 
snow. Across the prairie and through the naked cafions howls the 
breath of the cold season, the cottonwoods shiver, and the pines that 
cluster in the gorges moan and complain. Or in midwinter not a 
breath of air may stir, and then the merciless, terrible cold broods 
over the land, a silent death to all living things that are unprotected 
from it. The earth becomes stone, the rivers stand still in their beds 
like sheets of steel. In the long black nights there is no sound to- 
break the silence, and under the stars the snowy plains stretch out 
like endless wastes of barren white. At such seasons the huge fire- 
place in the ranch house held blazing logs, and watchers sat beside the 
fire to see that it did not go out at night when the other men slept 
under piled-up blankets. In the corral the shaggy ponies huddled 
together for warmth, icicles often hanging from their lips, while the 
frost whitened the hollow backs of the cattle. 

In the winter there is much less work for the ranchman than at 
other seasons, but there is hardship and exposure in what he does. 



66 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



rslany of the men go with the summer, and for those that are left 
there is little to do except to hunt for animal food now and then, and 
on very bitter days to lounge restlessly abotit the house. But some 
are out in the line camps and occasionally the ranchman has to make 
the round of these; besides, one or more of the cowboys who are at 
home must every day be out when the cattle have become weak, as 
they get in the hard weather, so as to pick up and drive in those beasts 
that would otherwise perish. The horses shift for themselves and 
need no help. In the winter the Indians often cut down the cotton- 
wood trees and feed the tops to their ponies, not so much to keep 
them from starving as to prevent them from wandering off in search 
of grass. 

The men in the line camp lead a hard existence, as they are com- 
pelled to be out in all kinds of weather and must be especially active 
and on the alert during storms. The camps are established along 
some line which it is proposed to make the boundary of the cattle's 
drift in a given direction. 

''For example, we care very little whether our cattle Avander to the 
Yellowstone, but we strongly object to their drifting East and South- 
East towards the granger country and the Sioux reservation, espec- 
iallv as when they drift that v^ay they come out on flat, bare plains 
where there is danger of perishing. Accordingly, the cow-men along 
the Little ^Missouri have united in establishing a row of camps to the 
East of the river, along the line where the broken ground meets the 
prairie. The camps are tisually for two men each, and some fifteen or 
twenty miles apart; then in the morning the two men start out in 
opposite ways each riding till he meets his neighbor of the next camp 
nearest on that side, when he returns. The camp itself is sometimes 
merelv a tent pitched in a sheltered coulee, but ought to be either 
made of logs or else a dugout in the ground. A small corral and 
horse-shed is near by, with enotigh hay for the ponies, of which each 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



67 



rider has two or three. In riding over the beat each man drives any 
cattle that have come near it back into the Bad Lands, and if he 
sees by the hoof-marks that a few have strayed out over the Hne very 
recently he will follow and fetch them home. They must be forced 
Avell back into the Bad Lands before a great storm strikes them, for 
if they once begin to drift in masses before an icy gale it is impossible 
for a small number of men to hold them, and the only thing is to 
let them go, and then to organize an expedition to follow them as 
soon as possible. Line riding is very cold work and dangerous, too, • 
when the men have to be out in a blinding snow storm or in a savage 
blizzard that takes the spirit in the thermometer far down below 
zero." 

But there are other sorts of work besides line riding that necessi- 
tates exposure to the bitter weather of the open western lands. Once 
while over at Beaver Creek hunting up a lost horse Mr. Roosevelt 
met a cow-boy who was out on the same errand. They started home 
together across the prairies, and were caught in a heavy storm of 
snow almost as soon as they had left the ranch where they had spent 
the night. They were soon completely turned round in their tracks, 
the snow^ blinding them as to locality, and they had to travel entirely 
by compass. They felt their way along for eight or nine hours, 
until finally they got down into the broken country and came upon an 
empty hut. In this hut they passed the night, picketing their horses 
in a sheltered nook near by. To while away the time Mr. Roose- 
velt read ''Hamlet" from a pocket Shakespeare he happened to have 
with him. The Texan cow-boy was much interested in the play 
and commented freely on those parts of it which most appealed to 
him — especially Polonius's advice to Laertes, wdiich he translated 
into his own way of expressing it with considerable relish, and ended 
with the criticism that "old Shakespeare saveyed human nature 
some." In the winter life on the plains even those who do not look for 



68 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



horses and are not compelled to ride the line day in and day out are 
apt to encounter hardship and danger in being abroad in the bitter 
season. 

''Yet a ride in midwinter is certainly fascinating. The great white 
country wrapped in the powdery snow drift seems like another land; 
and the familiar landmarks are so changed that a man must be 
careful lest he lose his way, for the discomfort of a night in the open 
during such weather is very great indeed. When the sun is out the 
glare from the endless white stretches dazzles the eyes; and if the 
gray snow clouds hang low and only let a pale, wan light struggle 
through, the lonely w^astes become fairly appalling in their desolation. 
For hour after hour a man may go on and see no signs of life except 
perhaps a big white owl sweeping noiselessly by, so that in the dark 
it looks like a snow wreath; the snow gradually chilling the rider to 
the bones, as he draws his fur cap tight over his ears and muffles his 
face in the huge collar of his wolfskin coat, and making the shaggy 
little steed drop head and tail as it picks it way over the frozen soil. 
There are few moments more pleasant than the home-coming when 
in the gathering darkness, after crossing the last chain of ice-covered 
buttes, or after coming around the last turn in the wind-swept valley, 
we see through the leafless trees or across the frozen river the red 
gleam of the firelight as it shines through the ranch windows and 
flickers over the trunks of the cottonwoods outside, warming a man's 
blood by the mere hint of the warmth awaiting him inside." 

In the Bad Lands, with their fantastic formations, the winter 
scenery is especially notable. The burning mines are among the 
more interesting features. The coal seams that have taken fire form 
these. In size they vary greatly. Some send aloft smoke columns 
that can be seen miles away, while others are scarcely noticeable a 
few rods of¥. The old ones burn away gradually, while new ones 
break out in the most unexpected places. One suddenly appeared 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



69 



about a half-mile from the ranch house. The men never knew it was 
there till one cold moonlight night when they were riding home, Mr. 
Roosevelt with them, they rounded the corner of a ravine and saw in 
their path a tall white pillar of smoke rising from a rift in the snowy 
crags ahead of them. As the trail had been over entirely familiar 
ground the riders were for the moment almost as startled as if they 
had come upon a ghost. A strong smell of sulphur hangs around the 
burning mines, and the hot earth crumbles and cracks, while through 
the long clefts that form in it there may be seen the heavy glow of 
deep subterranean fires with tongues of bright blue and pink flame 
struggling up to the surface. 

Yet the winters vary. During some years the ranchmen can go 
about in light-weight clothing even in January and February, while 
the suffering of the cattle is reduced to a minimum. During other 
winters the severity of the cold is terrible, while the furious bliz- 
zards render it a physical impossibility for the men to stir outside 
their shelter except at the imminent peril of their lives. Men are 
frozen to death when caught in shelterless places, and evidence goes 
to show that the doomed men had gone mad before dying, some of 
them having stripped themselves of most of their clothing, their 
bodies being found almost naked. On the ranch bad accidents were 
exceptional, though every winter men were more or less frost-bitten. 
Mr. Roosevelt had an experience in this line while returning by 
moonlight after a hunt for mountain sheep. The thermometer was 
twenty-six degrees below zero, and the men had had no food for 
twelve hours. Mr. Roosevelt became numb and before he was aware 
of it he had a frozen face, and one foot, both knees and one hand 
were in a like condition. 

Every six or seven years these severe storms follow one another 
without interval throughout the winter months. At such seasons the 
losses among the stock are great. 



70 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



"One such winter occurred in 1880-8 1. This was when there were 
very few ranchmen in the country. The grass was so good that the 
old range stock escaped pretty well, but the trail herds were almost 
destroyed. The next severe winter was that of 1886-87 when the 
rush of incoming herds had overstocked the ranges, and the loss was 
in consequence fairly appalling, especially to the outfits that had 
just put on cattle. The snow fall was unprecedented both for its 
depth and for the way it lasted, and it was this and not the cold that 
caused the loss. About the middle of November the storms began. 
Day after day the snow came down, thawing and then freezing and 
piling itself higher and higher. By January the drifts had filled the 
ravines and coulees almost level. The snow lay in great masses on 
the plateaus and river bottoms, and this lasted until the end of 
February. The preceding summer we had been visited by a pro- 
longed drought, so that the short, scanty grass was already well 
cropped down; the snow covered what pasturage there was to the 
depth of several feet, and the cattle could not get at it at all and 
could hardly move around. It was all but impossible to travel on 
horseback, except on a few well-beaten trails. It v/as dangerous to 
attempt to penetrate the Bad Lands, whose shape had been com- 
pletely altered by the great white mounds and drifts. The starving 
cattle died by scores of thousands before their lielpless owners' eyes. 
The bulls, the cows who were suckling calves, or who were heavy 
with calf, the weak cattle that had just been driven up on the trail, 
and the late calves suft'ered most; the old range animals did better, 
and the steers best of all, but the best was bad enough. Even many 
of the horses died. An outfit near me lost half its saddle-band, the 
animals having been worked so hard that they were very thin when 
fall came. In the thick brush the stock got some shelter and sus- 
tenance. They gnawed every twig and bough they could get at. 
they browsed the bitter sage-brush down to where the branches were 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



71 



the thickness of man's finger. When near a ranch they crowded into 
the outhouses and sheds to die, and fences had to be built around 
the windows to keep the wild-eyed, desperate beasts from thrusting 
their heads through the glass panes. In most cases it was impossible 
to drive them to the hay stacks or to haul the hay out to them. The 
deer even were so weak as to be easily run down, and on one or two 
of the plateaus where there were bands of antelope these wary crea- 
tures grew so numb and feeble that they could have been slaughtered 
like rabbits. But the hunters could hardly get out, and could bring 
home neither hide nor meat, so the game went unharmed. 

''The way in which the cattle. got through the winter depended 
largely on the different localities in which the bands were caught 
when the first heavy snows came. A group of animals in a bare 
valley, without underbrush and with steepish sides would all die, 
strong and weak alike; they could get no food and no shelter, and 
so there would not be a hoof left. On the other hand, hundreds 
wintered on the -great thickly- wooded bottoms near my ranch house 
with little more than ordinary loss, though a skinny, sorry looking 
crew by the time the snow melted. In intermediate places the strong 
survived and the weak perished." 

This is a piece of description which challenges the efforts of the 
author of ''Lorna Doone," whose great book describes a terrible 
winter in the black country of England, and describing it in a manner 
that makes it a stock quotation of strong, imaginative writing, 
though borne out by facts, in no way surpasses Mr. Roosevelt in 
detailing an actual experience in the wilds of American life. 

Mr. Roosevelt, in detailing his experiences on the ranch in that 
wild winter, says that it would be impossible to imagine a sight more 
dreary and desolate than that offered by the country when the snow 
at last disappeared, in March. The land was a barren waste, not a 
green thing was visible, while the dead grass had been eaten so close 



72 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



by the famished animals that the land looked as though it had been 
shaved by a razor, so denuded was it of any aspect of ever having 
had a green leaf on it. Once in a while among the desolate hills a 
rider would come across a band of gaunt, hollow-flanked beasts, their 
sides seeming to meet in the middle. They would be feebly trying to 
crop the sparse, dry pasturage, and were too listless to move out of 
the way of the horseman; and all around in sheltered spots were the 
blackened carcasses of once fine cattle, some in the pathetic attitude 
of having merely lain down to rest. 

The best comfort afforded the ranch of which we write lay in the 
fact that it did not suffer a heavy loss from weak cattle getting mired 
down in the springs and mud-holes when the ice broke up and water 
sprang to make green once more the dead brown of the earth, for all 
the weak creatures were already dead. The ranch was to blossom 
once more with grass and shrub and the cattle to feed leisurely and 
to repletion when summer came, but there was a dreary time of 
waiting and the April rains and the balmy air of May were eagerly 
looked for. Mr. Roosevelt, in his enforced leisure, had his books 
and his writing to help pass the days and weeks of monotony during 
the winter and early spring. Letters came to him telling him of 
events in the world he had left for the time being, and he was fully 
advised of the trend of political events. While he was out of it all 
he studied the questions that were making history during his absence. 
The same old rule of political rivalry and not too-clean methods 
obtained, and as usual he studied the news of the day and the ten- 
dencies that made for corruption or reform in American pjiblic life. 
Far off in the wilds which he had elected to be his stopping-place 
till he should have established a physical equilibrium not to be unduly 
weighted by what he might yet have to do in the affairs of the 
country, he waited. For it is doubtful if he ever once thought that 
he should become a mere private citizen while there was need 




ROOSEVELT IN HUNTING COSTUME— TAKEN IN 1885 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



75 



of practical politicians and statesmen to guard and guide the well- 
loved land in its progressive march toward the consummation of what 
its sincerest friends hoped for it. We have said that he was ''out of 
it." But is it possible for a man of strength to ever cease from allegi- 
ance to what has once called forth his best efforts? From the time of 
his earliest manhood, even when at Harvard, he had determined to 
do his utmost for the country which his progenitors had loved and 
did their best for. In the seclusion of the fierce western winter, be- 
side the roaring log fires of his ranch-house, surrounded by the 
rugged cattlemen, the cow-boys who paid Httle heed to the civilized 
aspects of cities, his mind surely went out to the city where he had 
been born — the city where over two hundred years before the first 
Roosevelt that had come to the country held office; and he more than 
likely knew more about matters at home than had he been in the 
feverish din of town life, an important part of it. The newspapers 
sent him told him much, but his past experience was his best factor in 
understanding the why and wherefore of the events the papers 
chronicled. He understood Tammany as well as its most enthusiastic 
supporter, and Washington was an open book to him. It is Emerson 
who has said that we who linger in one place have the faculty, if we 
possess reasoning imagination, to bring all foreign or far-off coun- 
tries to us; that travel, while it broadens the mind of a man, and 
makes, him receptive of impressions, does not necessarily give a 
clearer understanding of the lands we visit than may be ours if in 
some sequestered spot we read and think and apply our reading and 
our thought to their legitimate purpose. Mr. Roosevelt was always 
a reader and a thinker; with all his impulsiveness of manner and im- 
patience with anything that was not straightforward and direct, there 
has been a vein of peculiar gentleness and poetic insight into the 
motives of men. His love of nature would prove him to be anything 
but an austere man expecting impossibilities from frail humanity, 



76 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



but that same love of nature would make him irritable in the presence 
of what is vague and uncertain in the dealings of those around him. 
In his ranch he conned the reports of the doings of the day in places 
far away from him, in the purlieus of the cities, in the precincts of 
Washington, which is no city at all, and he figured out within himself 
the possibilities that were in store for a reformer who would go East 
and delve into politics once more. 

But he w^as not yet ready to go into the crowded vortex of civilized 
life; he was with nature and the rough element that is honest till it 
takes on the gloss of civilization's fictions. Here he would stay, 
adding to his physical well-being by close companionship with nature, 
and when the time came for him to once more go into active public 
life, if he should be needed he would be ready. He was now a ranch- 
man, a hunter, and his life was affiliated with the stern side of nature 
in the West, that West of which he should write with the clear under- 
standing that characterizes everything which he undertook to com- 
prehend. 



CHAPTER IV. 



Americans and Mexicans on the Plains — The "Bad Man" of the West — Claim- 
jumpers — Horse-thieves — A Noted Desperado — Opening a Cowboy Ball — The 
Frontier and Women — Character of the Cowboy — Indians — An Indian 
Adventure — Organizing a Troop — Loss of Boat — Capture of Boat-thieves 
and Taking them to the Sheriff — Dogged Determination a Characteristic. 

OF all free men, the hunter is the freest. He is responsible to 
no man but himself. He chops and saws the logs for his 
hut, or he makes a rude dug-out on the side of a hill do 
duty as a domicile, with a skin roof and flap for his door, and no man 
preceded him in ownership of it. He buys some flour and salt, and 
when he can afford them, sugar and tea. But he does not buy much 
at a time, for it must all be carried hundreds of miles on his horse's 
back. He has a bunk covered with deer skins for a bed, and a kettle 
and a frying pan are his only kitchen utensils. Mr. Roosevelt lived 
as the other hunters, with but few more conveniences. His en- 
thusiasm in bringing down big game never deserted him in his ex- 
peditions to the Rocky Mountains. But the old style hunter has 
gone out, and the cow^-boy takes his place. The cow-boys are typical 
men of the plains. They are hard working, faithful men, but they will 
get into scrapes. Once while on a wagon trip Mr. Roosevelt got 
caught while camped by a spring on the prairie because of his horses 
all straying. A few miles off was the camp of tw^o cow-boys who 
were riding the line for a large southern cow-outfit. He did not even 
know their names, but happening to pass by them he told them of the 
loss of his horses, and they came to him the day after wnth all the miss- 
ing horses, having hunted for them for twenty-four hours. They w^ere 

Texans, quiet, clean cut, pleasant spoken young fellows, yet to his 

77 



78 



THE;0D0RE ROOSEVELT. 



surprise he found that they were fugitives from justii'e. They were 
complaining of the winter weather, and spoke of their longing to go 
back to the South. The reason they could not do so was that the 
summer before they had engaged in a small civil war in one of the 
wilder parts of New Mexico. It had originated in a quarrel between 
two ranches over respective water rights and range rights. There 
were collisions between bands of armed cow-boys, cattle were 
harried, camps burned down, and the sons of the rival owners fought 
one another to the death when they met in the drinking places of 
the miserable towns. Soon the thinly veiled jealousy that ever exists 
between the Americans and Mexicans was laid bare, and when the 
original cause of the quarrel was adjusted, a fierce race fight took 
place, which was quelled by the arrival of a strong sheriff's posse, 
but not until after a couple of affrays in which blood Avas freely shed. 
In one of these the American cow-boys of a certain range drove out 
the Mexicans from among them. In another affray, to avenge the 
murder of one of their number the cow-boys gathered from the 
country lying round about and stormed the "greaser," or Mexican 
village where the murder had been committed, killing four of the in- 
habitants. Mr. Roosevelt's two acquaintances had borne a part in 
this last offense and were "wanted" by the authorities. They talked 
plainly with their new friend, and it is not often the case that plains- 
rden talk freely, being as a rule reserved with strangers, and are sure 
to dislike men whom they meet for the first time. 

At another time, at a ranch not far from his own Mr. Roosevelt 
found among the cow-boys gathered for the round-up two Bible- 
reading Methodists. He found them as strait-laced as possible, but 
they did not obtrude their opinions upon any one, and were first- 
class workers and so got along well with the other men. Among the 
associates of these two were two or three ruffians, as loose of tongue 
as of Bfe, Says Mr, Roosevelt, "Generally some form of stable 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



79 



government is provided for the counties as soon as their population 
has become at all fixed, the frontiersmen showing their natural apti- 
tude for organization. Their lawlessness is put down pretty effec- 
tively. For example, as soon as we organized the govemm(ent of 
Medora — an excessively unattractive little hamlet — we elected good 
officers, built a log jail, prohibited all shooting in the streets, and 
enforced the prohibition, etc. Up to that time there had been a good 
deal of lawlessness of one kind and another, only checked by an 
occasional piece of individual retribution or by a sporadic outburst of 
vigilance committee work. In such a society the desperadoes of 
every grade flourish. Many are merely ordinary rogues and swindlers 
who rob and cheat on occasion, but are dangerous only when led by 
some villaiin of real intellectual power. The gambler * * * 
scarcely classed as a criminal, indeed he may soon be a very public 
spirited citizen. But as his trade is so o»ften plied in saloons, and 
as even if, as sometimes happens, he doe's not cheat, many of his 
opponents are certain to attempt to do so, he is of necessity obliged to 
be skillful and ready with his weapon, and gambling rows are very 
common. Cow-boys lose much of their money to gamblers. * * * 
As already explained, they are in the main good men, and the dis- 
turbance they cause in a town is done from sheer rough, light- 
heartedness. They shoot off boot heels or tall hats occasionally, or 
make som.e obnoxious butt 'dance' by shooting round his feet, but 
they rarely meddle in this way with men who have not themselves 
played the fool. A fight in the street is almost always a duel between 
men who bear each other malice; it is only in a melee in a saloon 
that outsiders often get hurt, and then it is their own fault, for they 
have no business to be there. One evening at Medora a cow-boy 
spurred his horse up the rickety steps of the hotel piazza into the 
barroom where he began firing at the clock, the decanters, etc., the 
bartender meanwhile taking one shot at him, which missed. When 



80 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



he had emptied his revolver he threw down a roll of banknotes on 
the counter to pay for the damage he had done and galloped his horse 
out through the door, disappearing in the darkness with loud yells 
to a ratthng accompaniment of pistol shots interchanged between 
himself and som^e passerby who apparently began firing out of pure 
desire to enter into the spirit of the occasion — for it was the night of 
the Fourth of July, and all the country round about had come into 
town for a spree." 

Mr. Roosevelt studied, thus, the life in the wild West, as a student 
and a man who wished to be acquainted with every phase of the 
country's life. Of course there are plenty of hard characters among 
cow-boys, he admits, but scarcely more than among lumbermen, and 
the like; only, the cow-boys are so ready with their guns that a bully 
in a cow-boy camp is generally a murderer, rather than a mere 
bruiser. However, as a rule, cow-boys who prefer to be desperadoes 
soon drop their original characters and are no longer employed on 
ranches unless in parts of the country where little heed is paid to law 
and where, consequently, the cattle owner stands in need of a certain 
number of hired bravos. As a rule, Mr. Roosevelt says, claim- 
jumpers are only blackmailers. They sometimes drive an ignorant 
foreigner away from his claim by threats, but never a frontiersman. 
It is their pleasure to squat down beside ranchmen who are them- 
selves trying to hold land to which they have no claim, and who know 
that their only hope is to bribe or fight out the intruder. 

He found cattle thieves not common, though plenty of shiftless, 
vicious men will kill a cow or a steer in the winter, if they get the 
chance, for food. 

Numerous, however, are horse-thieves, and formidable. Reasons 
for the severity of the punishment for horse-stealing on the border 
are evident, he says. Horses are the most valuable property of the 
frontiersman, and are often absolutely essential to even his life. 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



81 



Horses are always marketable and are easily stolen, for they walk 
themselves off. Thus horse-stealing is a tempting business to the 
more reckless ruffians, and it is followed by armed men. Frequently 
the thieves band themselves with the road agents, or highwaymen, 
and other desperadoes, and organize into secret societies, which ter- 
rorize whole districts until overthrown by force. When the Civil 
War was freshly over a great many guerrillas from Arkansas and 
Missouri went to the plains. They took to horse-stealing and like 
pursuits. From these have sprung emulators in these latter days, but 
they have gone farther and farther West, and vengeance usually 
pursues them. The professional man-killers, or ''bad men," as they 
are called, may be horse-thieves or highwaymen, yet some of the 
"bad men" are quiet fellows whom accident has driven to wild careers. 
Perhaps one of them at some time has killed a man in self-defense; 
he in this way gains some sort of reputation, and the bullies look 
on him as a rival whom it would be an honor to dispatch; so that 
henceforth he must be on the watch; he must learn to shoot quickly 
and with good aim, and may have to take life after life in order to save 
his own. 

"A noted desperado, an Arkansas man, had become involved in a 
quarrel with two others of the same ilk, both Irishmen and partners. 
For several days all three lurked about the saloon-infested streets of 
the roaring little board-and-canvas city, each trying to get 'the drop,' 
the other inhabitants looking forward to the fight with pleased 
curiosity, no one dreaming of interfering. At last one of the partners 
got a chance at his opponent as the latter was walking into a gamb- 
ling hell, and broke his back near the hips; yet the crippled, mortally 
wounded man twisted around as he fell and shot his slayer dead. 
Then, knowing that he had but a few moments to live, and expecting 
that his other foe would run up on hearing the shooting, he dragged 
himself by his arms out into the street; immediately afterward, as he 



82 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



Iiad anticipated, the second partner appeared and was killed on the 
spot. The ^■ictor did not live twenty minutes." 

The first deadly afi'ray that took place in tlie town of ]vIedora was 
between a Scotchman and a ^Minnesota man. Both possessed 
"shooting" records. The Scotchman was a noted bull}', and was the 
more daring of the tAvo. but he was too hot-headed and overbearing 
to be a match for the hard-headed man from ^dinnesota. After a 
furious quarrel the Scotchman mounted his horse and. rifie in hand, 
rode to the door of the mud ranch perched on the river bluff where 
the American made his liome. and was instantly shot down by the 
latter from behind a corner of the building. 

One time ]\Ir. Roosevelt opened a cow-boy ball with the wife of the 
victor in this aft'air. the husband dancing opposite the pair. It was 
the lanciers. and the man knew all the steps far better than his wife's 
partner. 

There is a frontier saying that "the frontier is hard on women and 
cattle." The toil and hardship of a life passed in the wilderness drive 
the grace and beauty from a woman's face long before her youth has 
passed her by. But she has many qualities that atone for the fairness 
she has lost. She is a good mother: she is a faithful Avife: peril does 
not daunt her and hardship and poverty do not appall her. It Avas so 
Avith the Avoman Avho danced at the coAv-boy ball. These balls are 
great events in the little tOAvns Avhere they take place. Everybody 
roundabout attends them. There is ahvays much decorum observed, 
imseemly conduct not being tolerated. There is a master of cere- 
monies. He is selected as much for his strength as for his executive 
ability in afi'airs saltatorial. He calls oil the figures of the square 
dances Avith so much explicitness that even the most inexperienced 
mav prance through them, and all the time he preser^-es order. Some- 
times the guests are alloAved to carry their revolvers as a part of their 
social paraphernalia, and sometimes not. The nature of the orchestra 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



85 



depends upon the size of the place where the ball is held. At one ball 
Mr. Roosevelt attended the function came near being a failure, for 
the half-breed fiddler who was to make the music ''went and got 
himself shot," as the master of ceremonies disgustedly phrased it. 

Merely incidents in the cow-boy's life are these things. The whole 
class should not be judged, says Mr. Roosevelt, by what a few in- 
dividuals do of an outrageous character when, in the course of a few 
days spent in town, they lose their heads. More fairly should they be 
known for manly character, and fearless bravery. On the plains he 
passes his days; his life work is done there; and there he dies, facing 
death as he has faced many other evils, Cjuietly, uncomplainingly. 
The cow-boy is hospitable, hardy, adventurous. The pioneer of the 
American race, he prepares the w^ay for civilization, before whose 
advent he must take himself away, for civilization has nO' place or need 
for him. His existence, though hard and dangerous, has a wild 
attraction that draws to it his bold, free spirit. He lives in lonely 
lands where the prairies stretch out inimitably till they meet the blue 
horizon — plains across which he can go for days and weeks without 
seeing a human being nor so much as a hill to break the awful even 
monotony of the earth. 

''Up to 1880 the country through which the Little Missouri flows 
remained as wild and almost as little known as it was when the old 
explorers and fur-traders crossed it in the early part of the century. 
It was the last great Indian hunting ground, across which Gros- 
ventres and Mandans, Sioux and Cheyennes, and even Crows and 
Rees wandered in chase of game, and where they fought one another 
and plundered the small parties of white trappers and hunters that 
occasionally ventured into it. Once or twice generals like Sully or 
Custer had penetrated it in the course of the long, tedious and bloody 
campaigns that finally broke the strength of the Northern Horse 
Indians; indeed, the trail made by Custer's baggage train is to this 



86 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



day one of the well-known land marks, for the deep' ruts cut by the 
wheels of the heavy wagons are in many places still as distinctly to 
be seen as ever. 

''In 1883, a regular long-range skirmish took place just south of 
us between some Cheyennes and some cow-boys wath bloodshed on 
both sides, while about the same time a band of Sioux plundered a 
party of bufifalo' hunters of everything they owned, and some Crows 
who attempted the same feat with another party were driven off with 
the loss of two of their number. Since then there have been in our 
neighborhood no stand-up fights or regular raids; but the Indians 
have at different times proved more or less troublesome, burning the 
grass, and occasionally killing sto(^<i or carrying off horses that have 
wandered some distance away. They have also' suffered somewdiat 
at the hands of white horse-thieves. Bands of them accompanied by 
their squaws and children often come into the ranch country either 
to trade or to hunt, and are then, of course, perfectly meek and 
peaceable." 

On Mr. Roosevelt's ranch the white men got along pretty well 
with the Indians, as it was the rule to treat the red man fairly, as 
though he were white. For example, the white men on the ranch 
were always as willing to put down horse-stealing from Indians as 
from white men. In meeting a band of young bucks in a lonely, 
uninhabited country, though, there was always more or less danger; 
for the young Indians are hardly yet men as to age, and even young- 
fellows with white parents are usually the most truculent members 
of civilized communities, lack of years apparently giving license 
because responsibility is hardly yet appreciated. When a man comes 
on such a band of young bucks he stands the chance of losing his 
horse, his rifle or whatever else he may have about him, though a 
frontiersman with experience can usually ''stand off" such assailants 
unless the band be too large for him, or he loses his nerve. 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



87 



Mr. Roosevelt's one adventure with Indians he calls a very mild 
one. It was during a solitary trip to the North and East of the range 
to what was practically unknown country. One day, about noon, 
traveling along the edge of the prairie, he rode his horse up a slight 
rise and came out on a plateau about half a mile broad. When near 
the center four or five Indians suddenly leaped over the edge directly 
in front of him. As soon as they saw him they took their guns out 
of their slings, started their horses into a run and came full tilt at 
him, whooping and brandishing their rifles. The white man im- 
mediately reined up and dismounted. The level plain where he w^as 
was eminently suited for the Indian attack to be met. In a broken 
country, or where there is much cover the attacked party is at much 
disadvantage if pitted against such adepts at the art of hiding as are 
Indians. On the other hand, the red men will rarely rush in on a 
foe who, even if he be eventually overpowered, will probably inflict 
severe loss on his assailants. The fury of an Indian charge and the 
whoops of the men often scare horses into a stampede, but Mr. 
Roosevelt had trust in the horse he rode, which did not swerve. He 
waited till the Indians were within a hundred yards and then he drew 
a bead on the foremost one. At once the whole party of redskins 
scattered, doubling on their tracks, bending over alongside their 
horses. Some distance off they halted and consulted. Then one 
came forward alone, dropping his rifle and waving a blanket over his 
head. When he came to within fifty yards the white man halted him, 
and he pulled out a piece of paper, presumably the pass which all 
Indians are supposed to carry when absent from their reservation. 

''How!" he called out; ''me good Indian." 

The white man answered, "How!" and that while he was glad he 
was a "good Indian" he need not come any closer. When his com- 
panions began to draw near, Mr. Roosevelt covered the spokesman 
with his rifle and made him move off, which he did with remarkable 



88 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



American profanity. ]\Ir. Roosevelt then started to lead his horse 
out to the prairie. After hovering about a short time the Indians 
rode away. 

The relations between white men and Indians are rarely pleasant. 
Many of the frontiersmen are brutal and overbearing; most of the 
Indians are treacherous, revengeful and fiendishly cruel. Crime and 
bloodshed are the only possible results when such men are brought 
into contact. 

Indians difTer individually, and they differ as tribes. In these days 
an upper Cherokee is as good as a white. The Xez Perces difYer 
from the Apaches as much as possible. A Cheyenne is one of the 
most unforgetting foes in the world, while a Digger Snake is one of 
the meanest. The Pueblo is thrifty, industrious, peaceful; and an 
Arapahoe is lazy and thievish. Indians are good fighters, though 
poor shooters, being inferior to the old hunters. They have an 
effective discipline of their own, and so a body of them may easily 
overmatch an equal number of frontiersmen if the frontiersmen have 
no well drilled leader. If the cow-boys have rifles (for the revolver 
is of no use in long range individual fighting) they have little fear of 
the Indians so long as there are only half a dozen or so on a side. But 
though quick, yet, owing to the heaviness of their saddles, thev are 
unable to make the wonderful marches of the Indians, and their un- 
ruly spirit often makes them ineffective when gathered in any number 
and without a good leader. 

'Tn the summer of 1886, at the time of the war scare over the 
'Cutting incident,' we began the organization of a troop of cavalry 
in our district, notifying the Secretary of \Y^v that we were at the 
service of the Government, and being promised every assistance by 
our excellent chief executive of the Territory, Governor Pierce. Of 
course the cow-boys were all eager for war. thev did not care much 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



89 



with whom. They were very patriotic (on the day when the An- 
archists were hanged in Chicago my men joined with the rest of the 
neighborhood in burning them in effigy); they were fond of ad- 
venture, and to tell the truth they were by no means averse to the 
prospect of plunder. News from the outside world came to us very 
irregularly and often in distorted form, so that we began to think 
we might get involved in a conflict not only with Mexico but with 
England as well. One evening at my ranch the men began talking 
over the English soldiers, so I got down my 'Napier' and read them 
several extracts from his descriptions of the fighting in the Spanish 
peninsula, also recounting as well as I could the great deeds of the 
British cavalry from Waterloo to Balaklava, and finishing up by de- 
scribing from memory the fine appearance; the magnificent equip- 
ment and the superb horses of the Household Cavalry and of a regi- 
ment of Hussars I had once seen. All of this produced the same 
effect on my Hsteners that the sight of Marmion's cavalcade produced 
in the minds of the Scotch moss-troopers on the eve of Flodden; and 
at the end, one of them, who had been looking into the fire and rub- 
bing his hands together said with a regretful emphasis, ''Oh! how I 
zvoiild like to kill one of them.' " 

In the locality of the ranch there was more difficulty with white 
renegades than with Indians. Mr. Roosevelt had been anxious to 
run down the river in a boat during the time of the spring floods for 
duck and goose shooting. The men could only go down during a 
freshet, for the Little Missouri is usually a mere thread of sluggish 
water, or else a boiling, muddy torrent. In 1886 the ice left the river 
in February but piled up. In March a great jam came down. One 
day the hunters crossed the river and walked ten miles to a rugged 
country, and killed four deer. They were hung in a cedar cation. 
A fortnight later they went for the venison and found that cougars 
had eaten them. They followed the trail of the cougars for som.e time 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT, 



until it was lost in a tangle of rocky hills. They retraced their steps 
intending to return the following day with a good tracking hound. 
The following morning they found that their boat had been stolen. 
Whoever had taken the boat had certainly gone down the river, and 
the only other boat on the Little Alissouri was a flat-bottomed scow 
in the possession of three hard characters who lived in a shack, or hut, 
some twenty miles above the ranch, and who had been threatened 
with lynching. The three men had long been accused of cattle- 
killing, and that worst of all offenses, horse-stealing. Their leader 
was a fellow named Finnegan, a rather hard case, who had been chief 
actor in a number of shooting scrapes. The two others were a half 
breed and an old German. 

Mr. Roosevelt and his men at once set to work to build a flat- 
bottomed scow in which to follow these men. 

In a wild country where the power of the law is unheeded and 
where everyone has to rely upon himself for protection, men soon 
grow to feel that it is in the highest degree unwise to submit to 
any wrong without making immediate and resolute effort to avenge 
it upon the wrongdoers. And so the boat was begun and finished 
and stocked for the journey, and started. The boat drifted through 
heaped up piles of ice all day. At nightfall Mr. Roosevelt and his 
men landed and made a camp. In the morning it was decidedly 
colder than it had been, and an icy North wind was blowing. The 
boat drifted with difficulty among the ice. As the afternoon waned 
the air grew still colder. In the early evening another landing was 
effected, and another camp made for the night. During the night 
the thermometer went down to zero and in the morning the river 
was frozen slush. Accordingly the men took a couple of hours for 
a deer hunt, and shot a couple of bucks and a yearling doe. This 
insured plenty of fresh meat. The scow was loaded with it and 
started. The cold still continued intense and b.efore long those on 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



91 



the SCOW were nearly benumbed by it, until at last an incident oc- 
curred which set their blood freely running again. They were of 
course always on the alert, keeping a sharp lookout ahead and 
around, and making as Httle noise as possible. In the middle of the 
afternoon of this, the third day, as the boat came around a bend the 
men saw in front of them the lost boat, together with a scow moored 
against the bank, while a little way back, from among some bushes, 
the smoke of a camp fire curled up in the frosty air. It was the camp 
of the thieves. As Roosevelt glanced at the faces of his two followers 
(only two men were with him) he was struck by the grim look in their 
eyes. The boat was hastily and silently shoved toward the bank. As 
soon as it touched the shore ice Roosevelt leaped out and ran up 
behind a clump of bushes so as to cover the landing of the others, 
who had to make the boat fast. 

The thieves knew they had taken the only craft upon the river, so 
they felt secure. But the German was the only one in the camp, his 
shooting iron on the ground. He gave up at once. His two com- 
panions were off hunting. He was made fast and a. man was set to 
watch him, and see that he made no noise, and then the hunters of 
men sat down to wait for the other two miscreants. They came 
along carelessly, their rifles on their shoulders. When they were 
twenty yards or so off Roosevelt and his men straightened up and 
covered them, while Roosevelt yelled to them to hold up their hands. 
The half breed, trembHng, obeved at once. Finnegan hesitated a 
second, his eyes hke those of a wolf. Then as Roosevelt walked 
toward him, covering the center of his chest so as to avoid over 
shooting, he saw that he had no show, and with an oath, and letting 
his rifle drop, he held both hands up beside his head. The captors 
camped where they were for the night, making a great fire which 
was to be kept up all night. The captured men were made to take 
off their boots, which was a sure precaution, as it was a cactus country 



92 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



in which no man could travel in his bare feet. Next morning the 
captors and the captured floated down stream. 

For some miles the party went along swiftly, but they came to an 
ice jam that precluded further progress that day. There was nothing 
to do but pitch camp. For eight days they were held here by the ice, 
and the store of provisions became low. There was no game, and 
besides, the prisoners had to be watched. So long as the captors 
kept awake there was no danger, for their three men knew them and 
understood perfectly that the slightest attempt to break away would 
result in their being shot down.. 

Finding that they were well treated and closely watched the thieves 
behaved well and gave no trouble, though after the half breed had 
been lodged in jail he indulged in a stabbing affray. They conversed 
freely with their captors and after the first evening made no allusion 
to the theft or anything connected with it. Once and once only did 
Finnegan broach tlie subject. Somebody had been speaking of a 
man they all knew, called "Calamity," who had been recently taken 
by the sherift on a charge of horse-stealing. Calamity had escaped 
once, but was caught at a disadvantage the second time. AMien told 
to hold up his hands he refused and attempted to draw his own re- 
volver, with the result that he had two bullets put through him. 
Finnegan commented on Calamity as being a fool for not knowing 
when a man had the drop on him. Then, suddenly turning, he said, 
his weather-beaten face tiushing darkly, 'Tf Fd had any show at all 
you'd have sure had to fight, ~\Ir. Roosevelt; but there wasn't any 
use making, a break when Fd only have got shot myself, with no 
chance of harniing any one else." Then the subject was dropped. 

Provisions grew shorter and shorter. The Indians had driven all 
the deer out of the country around about, and only an occasional 
prairie fowl was to be shot. At last, after having worked down some 
thirt}- miles at the tail of the ice jam the men struck an outlying" 




ROOvSEVELT IN "COW-BOY" COSTUME 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



95 



COW camp. There was but one cow-boy in it, but Roosevelt and his 
fellow police knew the}' would get help here, for in a stock country 
all make common cause against either horse-thieves or cattle-thieves. 
The cow-boy had no wagon, but there was one some fifteen miles 
away. J\Ir. Roosevelt went for it. The settler who loaned the 
wagon could not understand why so much trouble was taken with 
thieves who could have been hanged off-hand. 

Returning to the river next day the thieves were walked up to the 
Killdeer Mountains. His two assistants leaving him to go back to 
the boats, i\Ir. Roosevelt took his three men into Dickinson, the 
nearest town. Traveling was bad, the two little mares pulling the 
wagon could go only at a walk. It took two days and a night to 
make the journey. It was a most desolate drive. The prairie had 
been burned the fall before and was a bleak waste of blackened 
earth, while a cold, rainy mist came down all of the two days. The 
only variety was where the road crossed the shallow headwaters of 
Knife and Green rivers. Here the ice was high along the banks, and 
the wagon had to be taken to pieces in order to get it over. Mr. 
Roosevelt's three captives were unarmed, but as he was alone with 
them, except for the driver, of whom he knew nothing, he had to be 
doubly on his guard and never let his prisoners come close to him. 
The wagon put together on the opposite side of the river, the little 
mares jogged on, the roads so heavy that any hope of accelerating the 
pace by flogging the horses was out of the question. Mr. Roosevelt 
found that the better plan was to put the prisoners in the wagon and 
himself walk behind, a Winchester across his shoulder for use in case 
of need. Accordingly, he trudged through the ankle-deep icy mud 
in the rear of the conveyance. Hour after hour went by in this way, 
hunger, cold and fatigue adding to the uncomfortable journey. At 
night the party put up at the hut of a frontier granger, the only habita- 
tion on the road. There was an upper and a lower bunk in this hut. 



^6 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



Mr. Roosevelt did not dare to go to sleep, but making his three men 
climb into the upper bunk from which they could get only with 
difficulty, he sat with his back against the cabin door all night long 
and watched them. After thirty-six hours of sleeplessness he at last 
handed his prisoners over to the sheriff of Dickinson. This story 
is told at length to show the dogged determination of j\Ir. Roosevelt 
once he has made up his mind to do a thing. He had determined to 
capture the men and to give them up to the proper authorities and 
he had done so at great discomfort to himself. This dogged de- 
termination has ever signalled his character in his political life and 
his public offices for the public good. 



CHAPTER V. 



Antelope and the Manner of Hunting Them — The Black-tail of the Mountains — 
Still-hunting — Deer Hunting with Hounds — Coursing Jack-rabbits, Swifts and 
Foxes — Round-horn Elks — A Hunt of Elks — Big-horn Sheep — Ex- 
periences with Them — Wonderful Speed — Habits of Bighorn Sheep — White 
Goats of the Rockies — Praise of Hunting — Instincts of Born Hunter — Adapta- 
bility of Character — Back to Politics. 

A NTELOPE is the game from April to August, the bucks only 



being killed. The smoked venison, stored away, lasts 



through the bitter winter weather. Antelope gather in great 
bands in the fall, and are queer, freaky creatures; they either travel 
south and leave the country, or they go to some out-of-the-way place 
where they stand no chance of being disturbed. In April the herds 
come back, but broken up into straggling parties. They have regjilar 
passes through which they go every year. One of these passes was 
not far from Mr. Roosevelt's ranch, where the antelope herds crossed 
the Little Missouri in vast numbers each spring on the return march. 
In the fall, hunters posted in the passes when the deer passed in dense 
throngs butchered enormous numbers. 

A man needs skill in antelope shooting, for the animals are wary, 
and the ground they infest is of a peculiar nature. They must 
generally be shot at over a hundred and fifty yards, and often between 
two and three hundred. As in all other kinds of big game shooting, 
success in antelope hunting often depends on sheer luck. While on 
the early spring excursions Mr. Roosevelt used to vary the sport and 
the fare as well by bringing down mallards, now and then his party 
would creep up to and kill the cock prairie fowls when they had 
gathered into their dancing rings to stretch themselves and spread 




98 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



their wings as they shuffled round, all the while keeping up a curious 
clucking and booming sound. Late in the season an antelope could 
generally be got by anyone of the party riding off alone to a tract 
of hilly prairie some fifteen miles from the ranch, where the prong- 
horns were usually abundant. 

"On such a trip," ]\Ir. Roosevelt writes, '1 leave the ranch-house 
by dawn, the rifle across my saddle-bow, and some strips of smoked 
venison in the saddle pockets. In the cool air the horse lopes 
smartly through the wooded bottoms. The meadow larks, with 
black crescents on their yellow breasts, sing all day long, but the 
thrushes only in the morning and evening; and their melody is heard 
at its best on such a ride as this. By the time I get out of the last 
ravines and canter along the divide, the dark bluff-tops in the East 
have begun to redden in the sunrise, while in the flushed West the 
hills stand out against a rosy sky. The sun has been up some little 
time before the hunting grounds are fairly reached; for the antelope 
stands alone in being a diurnal game animal that from this pecuH- 
arity, as well as from the nature of its haunts, can be hunted as well 
at mid-day as at any other hour. Arrived at the hunting grounds I 
generally, but not always, dismount and hunt on foot, leaving the 
horse tethered out to graze. 

''Lunch is taken at some spring, which may be only a trickle of 
water at the base of a butte, where a hole must be dug out with a 
knife and hands before the horse can drink. Once or twice I have 
enjoyed unusual dehcacies at such a lunch in the shape of the eggs of 
curlew or prairie fowl baked in hot ashes. The day is spent in still- 
hunting, a much easier task among the ridges and low hills than out 
on the gently rolling prairies. Antelope see much better than deer, 
their great bulging eyes placed at the roots of the horns being as 
strong as twin telescopes. Extreme care must be taken not to let 
them catch a glimpse of the intruder, for it is then hopeless to attempt 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



99 



approaching them. On the other hand, there is never the least 
difficulty in seeing them ; for they are conspicuous beasts and, unlike 
deer, they never hide, being careless whether they are seen or not, 
so long as they can keep a good lookout. . They trust only to their 
own alert watchfulness and quick senses for safety. The game is 
carried home behind the saddle, and the bottom on which the ranch 
house stands is not often reached until the moon, showing crimson 
through the haze, has risen above the blufifs that skirt the river." 

In May and June the little antelope kid appears. He is a queer 
little fellow, but at a very early age learns to run as fast as his parents. 
Antelopes often suffer from freaks of apathetic indifference to danger, 
which are curious as existing in an animal notoriously wary. Also 
they are fond of wandering, and sometimes appear in most unlikely 
places. Thus, once, Mr. Roosevelt, while building the cow corral in 

• an open bottom, found five of the animals there, but having no 
weapon with him the creatures retired unmolested. Antelope are much 

♦ more difficult tO' shoot than deer because of their tough hide, which 
seems to turn a bullet aside, but so plenty are they at times that Mr. 
Roosevelt often brought one down before breakfast. 

With the first sharp frost the chase for antelope is abandoned for 
that of deer. Then the favorite quarry is the blacktail of the moun- 
tain and the high, craggy hills. "We kill him by fair still-hunting, 
and to follow him successfully through the deep ravines and across 
the steep ridges of his upland home a man should be sound in wind 
and limbs, and a good shot with the rifle as well. Many a glorious 
fall morning I have passed in this pursuit. Often, moreover, I have 
slain him in the fading evening as I walked homeward in the still, 
dim twilight — for all wild game dearly love the gloaming. Once on 
a frosty evening I thus killed one when it was so dark that m'y aim 
was Httle but guesswork. I was walking back to camp through a 
winding valley hemmed in by steep cedar-crowned walls of clay and 



LofC. 



100 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



rock. All the landscape glimmered white with the new fallen snow, 
and in the West the sky was still red with the wintry sunset. Sud- 
denly a great buck came out of a grove of snow-laden cedars and 
walked with swift strides up to the point of a crag that overlooked 
the valley. There he stood motionless, while I crouched unseen in 
the shadoAv beneath. As I fired he reared upright and then plunged 
over the cliff. He fell a hundred feet before landing in the bushes, 
yet he did not gash or mar his finely moulded head and shapely 
massive antlers. On one of the last days I hunted, in November, I 
killed tAvo blacktail. a doe and a buck, with one bullet. They were 
feeding in a glen high up the side of some steep hills, and by a careful 
stalk over rough ground I got within fifty yards. Peermg over the 
brink of the clifi'-Hke slope up which I had clambered. I saw them 
standing in such a position that the neck of the doe covered the 
buck's shoulder. The chance was too tempting to be lost. ]\Iy bullet 
broke the doe's neck, and of course she fell where she was: but the 
buck went oft', my next two or three shots missing him. However, 
we followed his bloody trail through the high pass he had crossed, 
down a steep slope, and roused him from the brushwood in the 
valley bottom. He soon halted and lay down again, making off at 
a faltering gallop when approached; and the third time we came up to 
him he was too weak to rise." 

Deer was sometimes killed by the aid of hounds, of which there 
were two on the ranch. A blacktail buck can beat oft' a dog or a 
wolf, 'however, and he is a most awkward foe for a man. One of 
them nearly did up a cowboy in ]\Ir. Roosevelt's employ. The buck 
had been mortally wounded and had fallen, and the man ran up to 
stick him with the knife. The buck revived for a moment, struck 
down the man and tried to gore him, but did not succeed because of 
the despairing grip the man kept on his horns. The man, bruised and 
cut by the sharp hoofs, was rapidly grooving too weak to retain his 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



101 



hold on the horns, when in the struggle man and deer came to the 
edge of a washout and fell twelve of fifteen feet. This separated 
them, and the dying buck was too weak to renew the attack, while 
the man crawled off so much hurt that it was months before he 
recovered. 

AMiitetails are also fair still-hunting, but more often they were 
shot in the dense river bottoms by the help of the track hounds. The 
dogs went into the woods with a horseman to guide them and help 
them rout out the game, while the rest of the hunters, rifles in hand, 
rode from point to point outside, or else watched the passes through 
which the hunted animals were likely to run. 

'Tt is not a sport of which I am very fond, but it is sometimes 
pleasant as a variety. The last time we tried it I killed a buck in the 
bottom right below our ranch house, not half a mile off. The river 
was low and my post was at its edge; in front of me the broad sandy 
flat sparsely covered with willow brush. Deer are not ordinarily 
afraid of a noisy hound; they will play around in front of him, lead 
and flag in on. But Rob (one of the hounds) was different. The 
gray wolfish beast, swift and silent, threw them into a panic of terror, 
and in headlong flight they would seek safety from him in the densest 
thicket. On the evening in question one of my cow-boys went into 
the brush with the hounds. I had hardly ridden to my place and 
dismounted when I heard the dog give tongue, the bluffs echoing 
back his long-drawn baying. Immediately afterward a young buck 
appeared coming along the sandy river bed, trotting, or cantering, 
and very handsome he looked, stepping with a light high action, his 
glossy coat glistening, his head thrown back, his white flag flaunting. 
i\Iy bullet struck him too far back, and he went on, turning into the 
woods. Then the dogs appeared, one running the scent, while the 
eager gaze-hound made wide half-circles around him as he ran; while 
the cow-boy, riding a vicious yellow mustang, galloped behind, 



102 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



cheering them on. As they struck the bloody trail they broke into 
clamorous yelling and tore at full speed into the woods. A minute 
or two later the sound ceased, and I knew they had run into the 
quarry." 

The hounds were sometimes used for other game besides deer — 
coyotes for instance, or a wolf, as has been done. Good sport was 
had on the rolling plains near Mandan in following a pack of four 
fleet long-legged dogs. They ran down coyotes, deer and an an- 
telope. They were especially fond of chasing coyotes, which they 
easily overtook. Brought to bay, the coyotes fought desperately, but 
unavailingly, for the hounds killed them easily. The animal that gave 
them most trouble was a badger which they once found and only 
killed after much struggling. The ranchmen also coursed jack- 
rabbits, swifts and foxes. The swifts are called swift foxes, being 
rather smaller than the southern gray fox. They have always been 
said to possess tremendous speed, and their name, ''swift," per- 
petuates the idea. As a matter of fact it is a delusion, as they are 
rather slow if anything. Once in a snow storm Mr. Roosevelt started 
one up under his horse's feet while riding across the prairie. He 
overtook him in a few^ strides and killed him with a revolver. The 
speed of the coyote has been popularly exaggerated. Judging by the 
records of the hounds on the ranch the antelope is the fastest animal of 
the plains. The white-tailed deer and the jack rabbit come next. 
Then follow in order the coyote, the fox and the swift. Individuals 
vary, however, for a jack rabbit might well outrun a slow^ deer, while 
a coyote and fox will outlast the swifter jack rabbit. Several dogs 
should make the run together, otherwise a jack or a swift although 
overtaken may make his escape by dexterous dodging. The cactus 
beds of the vicinity befriend the hunted animals, as the dogs rush 
into the thorny plants recklessly and are soon disabled, while a rabbit 
or a fox slips through easily and escapes injury. 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 103 

^Ir. Roosevelt, in hunting these smaller game, usually had a couple 
of his men with him. They scattered out, dogs and men, and rode in 
an irregular line across the country, beating the most likely looking 
places, and following at top speed any game that got up. Sometimes 
a jack rabbit starting well ahead woiild run for a couple of miles 
straight ahead before being turned by the leading hound, while oc- 
casionally one would get away altogether. At other times it would 
be caught at once and killed instantly, or only prolong its life a few 
seconds by its turns and twists. One swift gave the hunters several 
minutes chase though it never got thirty rods from the place where 
it started. The little creature went off as merrily as possible, its hand- 
some brush streaming behind its pliant back, and though overtaken 
at once it dodged so cleverly that dog after dog shot past him. A 
single dog could not have killed him. 

Coursing is the sport of sports for ranchmen now that big game 
has grown scarce, and there can be no healthier or more exciting 
pastime than that of following game with horse and hound over the 
vast Western plains. The round-horned elk is fast vanishing from the 
plains, the sight of one is exhilaration intense to the man with hunting 
instincts. In the season when the ranch was sorely in need of meat 
Mr. Roosevelt went after these elk. 

"At the time most of the ponies were off on one of the round-ups 
which, indeed, I had just left myself. However, my two hunting 
horses, Manitou and Sorrel Joe, were at home. The former I rode 
myself, and on the latter I mounted one of my men who was a par- 
ticularly good hand at finding and following game. With much diffi- 
culty we got together a scrub wagon team of four as unkempt, de- 
jected and vicious looking broncos as ever stuck fast in a quicksand or 
balked in pulling up a steep pitch. Their driver was a crack whip, 
and their load light, consisting of little but the tent and bedding, 
so we got out to the hunting ground and back in safety. * * * 



104 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



We camped by an excellent spring of cold, clear water, not a common 
luxury in the Bad Lands. We pitched the tent beside it, getting 
enough timber from a grove of ash to make a large fire which is, 
again, an appreciated blessing on the plains of the West. * >k * 
W^e started next morning before the gray was relieved by the first 
faint pink, and reached the broken country soon after sunrise. Here 
we picketed our horses, as the ground we were to hunt through was 
very rough. Two or three hours passed before we came upon fresh 
signs of elk. Then we found the trails of two, from the size presum- 
ably cows, made the preceding night, and started to follow them 
carefully and noiselessly, my companion taking one side of the valley 
in which we were, and I the other. » ^ * Yet though we walked 
as quietly as we could the game must have heard or smelt us, for 
after a mile's painstaking search we came to a dense thicket in which 
were two beds evidently but just left, for the twigs and bent grass 
blades were still slowly rising from the ground to which the bodies 
of the elks had pressed them." 

The hunters followed at once. The elk left the strip of rugged Bad 
Lands and went on into the smoother land beyond. The hunters 
considered it likely they would halt in some heavily timbered coulees 
six or seven miles off. They found the elk almost as soon as they 
struck the border of the ground they had thought would be their 
probable halting place. The hunters had regained their horses, for 
the scouting took them near the tethering place. The horses were 
unshod and made but little noise, and coming to a wide, long coulee 
the two men separated, Mr. Roosevelt going down one side, his com- 
panion the other. Half way down the ranchman whistled, and Mr. 
Roosevelt stood still at once. Nothing moved, and he glanced at his 
fellow hunter. The. ranchman had squatted down and was peering 
over into the dense laurel on Mr. Roosevelt's side of the coulee. In 
a minute he shouted that he saw a red patch in the brush. 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



105 



"Elk will sometimes lie as closely as rabbits, even when not in very 
good cover; still I was surprised at these not breaking out when they 
heard human voices. However, there they staid, and I waited several 
minutes in vain for them to move. From where I stood it was im- 
possible to see them, and I was fearful that they might go off down 
the valley and so offer me a very poor shot. Meanwhile Manitou, 
who is not an emotional horse, and is moreover blessed with a large 
appetite, was feeding greedily, rattling his bridle chains at every 
mouthful, and I thought he would act as a guard to keep the elk where 
they were while I shifted my position. So I slipped back and ran 
swiftly around to the head of the coulee to where my companion was 
still sitting. He pointed me out the patch of red in the bushes not 
sixty yards distant, and I fired into it without delay, by good luck 
breaking the neck of a cow elk, when immediately another one rose 
up from beside it and made off. I had five shots at her as she as- 
cended the hillside and the gentle slope beyond, and two of my bullets 
struck her close together in the flank — a very fatal shot. She was 
evidently mortally hit, and just as she hit the top of the divide she 
stopped, reeled and fell over dead." 

The hunters were much gratified with their luck, as it secured an 
ample stock of badly needed fresh meat. They left the elk where they 
fell, the following morning stopping for them with the wagon, into- 
which they put the creatures bodily, leaving the entrails for the 
vultures that were soaring in circles over the carcasses. 

The finest elk antlers Mr. Roosevelt ever got, as a trophy of his 
own rifle, were from a bull he killed far to the west of his ranch, in 
the eastern chains of the Rockies. He shot the animal one early 
morning while still-hunting in the open glades of a great pine forest. 
He and his companion had Hstened all night long to the animal and 
its fellows challenging one another. 

"At this season the bulls fight most desperately, and their combats 
are far more often attended with fatal results than is the case with 



106 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



deer. In the grove back of my ranch house when we first took pos- 
session we found the skulls of two elk with interlocked antlers; one 
was a royal, the other had fourteen points. Theirs had been a duel to 
the death." 

Since 1884, when Mr. Roosevelt went to the Big Horn Mountains, 
he had killed no grizzlies. There were some still left in the neighbor- 
hood of the ranch but they were exceedingly shy and lived in such 
inaccessible places that though he had twice devoted several days 
to solely hunting them he had not been successful so far — though 
two cow-boys found a bear in the open and after using a great num- 
ber of cartridges succeeded in killing it, the bear charging gamely to 
the last. 

Mr. Roosevelt, so it happened, generally hunted big-horn sheep in 
exceedingly cold weather, though the big-horn is not confined to 
any one climatic zone, but may be met with in the hot table lands of 
middle Mexico as well as to the North of the Canadian boundary. 
There exists no animal more hardy to grapple with the extremes of 
heat and cold. The big-horn, or Cimarron sheep, as the ^Mexicans 
call it, is the one American representative of the different breeds of 
mountain sheep that are found in the Old \\'orld. A brief experience 
with it changes the big-horn sheep into a quarry that taxes the skill 
of the hunter whether he be from a city or is a mountaineer. A ram 
seems to be always on the watch to notify his friends of the approach 
of danger. His favorite point of espial is high up on some cliff from 
whence he can see far and wide over the country. The slightest 
sound, the rattle of a loose stone, a cough, even a heavy footfall on 
the hard earth, attracts his attention and makes him climb as high 
as possible in order to ascertain the cause of the commotion in the 
silence. His eye catches the slightest movement, his scent is as 
keen as an elk's. A band of sheep is even more difficult than a solitary 
individual, but a band is easier to get on the track of, as there are 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



107 



always some young members guilty of indiscretion and who have not 
yet learned the meaning of danger. All of the flock is always on the 
lookout; while the others are grazing there is always one at least on 
the watch, and occasionally a particularly watchful ewe will jump 
upon some boulder so as to get a wider view. On ordinary occasions 
a big-horn menaced by danger flies beyond the reach of that danger 
with immediate decision and headlong speed, disappearing over 
ground where it needs an expert cragsman to so much as follow at a 
walk. Its wonderful feats of climbing have given rise to the fable 
that the rams on plunging down precipices alight on their horns. A 
band of sheep will sometimes seem to court instant death by spring- 
ing off a brink that looks perpendicular and where there is not a 
ledge or a crack to afTord foothold. On examination it will be found 
that the seemingly perpendicular cHff is not quite so and that the 
sheep in making the fearful descent from time to time strike the cliff 
with their hoofs, thus going down in long bounds, the final bound 
often made headlong like a plunge. 

It is not possible to hunt big-horn unless you have some knowledge 
of their habits. They go down to drink late in the evening or very 
early in the morning. In ordinary weather they begin feeding in the 
early morning, and when the sun is rising high they start to graze 
up the high ridge where they intend to lie during the day. They 
stay here till well on in the afternoon, and then again descend to the 
feeding grounds lower down. Often it is necessary for the hunter to 
lie carefully concealed for hours watching a flock in an unfavorable 
position until it shifts its ground. This is scarcely comfortable on a 
cold day in November and December, the months during which Mr. 
Roosevelt usually hunted big-horn. Speaking of it he says that what- 
ever success he has had in this hunting he owed to dogged perse- 
verance and patient persistence. On one of his expeditions after the 
sheep he wore away hour after hour trying to find them. At last 



108 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



he caught sight of a band. They were fifteen or twenty in number 
and were on the point of a spur some half-mile from him. 

"With glasses I could make out that there was no good head 
among them, but I was out after meat rather than for sport." He 
watched and waited for them to make a move. At last near sunset 
the sheep got on their legs and led by an old ewe began to descend 
into the valley. They went down the cliff with a rush. Picking out 
a fine young ram the hunter fired and hit him. The others, without 
an instant's pause, rushed madly down and away. The day when he 
shot his largest and finest ram was memorable, for the cold was in- 
tense, windless and deadly. 

"All day we walked and climbed through a white wonderland. On 
every side the snowy hills, piled one on another, stretched away, 
chain after chain, as far as sight could reach. The stern and iron- 
bound land had been changed to a frozen sea of billowy, glittering 
peaks and ridges. At last, late in the afternoon, three great big-horn 
suddenly sprang up to our right and crossed the tableland in front of 
and below us at a strong, stretching gallop. The lengthening sun- 
beams glinted on their mighty horns; their great, supple brown 
bodies were thrown out in bold relief against the white landscape; as 
they plowed with long strides through the powdery snow their hoofs 
tossed it up in masses of white spray. On the left of the plateau was 
a ridge, and as they went up this I fired twice at the leading ram, 
my bullets striking under him. On the summit he stopped for a 
moment, looking back, three hundred and fifty yards off, and my 
third shot went fairly through his lungs. He ran over the hill as if 
unharmed, but lay down a couple of hundred yards farther on, and 
was dead when we reached him." 

In hunting for white goats on the high peaks of the Rockies in 
1886, Mr. Roosevelt and his party would start imm.ediately after- 
breakfast each morning, and go sraight up the mountain sides for 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



10« 



hours at a time. They always went above the haunts of deer, and saw 
little evidences of any sort of life roundabout. The goat trails led 
away in every direction, zigzagging up, higher and higher. Although 
these game paths were deeply worn they yet showed very little fresh 
goat signs. 

'T had been as usual walking and clambering over the mountains 
all day long, and in the mid-afternoon reached a great slide with 
half-w^ay across it a tree. Under this I sat down to rest, my back 
against the trunk, and had been there but a few moments when my 
companion suddenly whispered to me that a goat was coming down 
the slide at its edge, near the w^oods. I was in a most uncomfortable 
position for a shot. Twisting my head around I could see the goat 
waddling down hill, looking just like a handsome tame billy, espec- 
ially when at times he stood upon a stone to glance around, with all 
four feet close together. I cautiously tried to shift my position and 
at once dislodged some pebbles, at the sound of which the goat 
sprang promptly up on the bank, his whole mien changing to one of 
alert, alarmed curiosity. He was less than a hundred yards off, so I 
risked a shot, all cramped and twisted as I was. But my bullet went 
low — I only broke his left fore-leg, and he disappeared over the bank 
like a flash. We raced and scrambled after him and took up the 
bloody trail. The trail went up the sharpest and steepest places, 
skirting the cliffs and precipices. * Suddenly on the top of 
the mountain we came upon the goat close up to us. He had risen 
from rolHng and stood behind a huge fallen log, his back barely show- 
ing above it. ^ ^ ^ The second bullet went just too high, cut- 
ting the skin above the high spinal bones over the shoulders, and 
the speed with which that three-legged goat went down the precipi- 
tous side of the mountain would have done credit to an antelope on 
the level." 

Weary and disgusted the men took up the trail. The goat had 
crossed the river on a fallen tree-trunk, and the men crossed that way 



lid THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

also. But the goat had gone up the mountain. It was now nearly 
dark. The men were confident the goat could not go far in his 
present condition. Next morning at daybreak they again climbed 
the mountain and took up the trail. At last, about midday, they 
spied the goat on a ledge seventy yards off. This time Mr. Roose- \ 
velt shot true. During that trip the hunters shot deer and hoped 
to come upon bear, though in this they were disappointed. But it 
was white goats they were after. 

One day the hunters climbed to the very top of a mountain range 
looking for game. They went from crag to crag and while they saw^ 
goat trails they saw none of the animals that made them. 

"When I reached the farther side of the plain and was about enter- 
ing the woods, I turned to look over the mountain once more, and 
my eye was immediately caught by two white objects wdiich were 
moving along the terrace, about half a mile to one side of the lick." 
They were goats, and came along rapidly. It was close on to sunset, 
and the goats, wary as usual, must have smelt the footsteps of their 
enemy, and halted too far away for a shot to reach them. 

"Shortly after noon next day we were on the terrace, having ap- 
proached with the greatest caution. I wore moccasins so as to make 
no noise. We soon found that one of the trails was evidently regu- 
larly traveled, probably every evening, and we determined to lie in 
wait by it so as either to catch the animals as they came down to feed, 
or else to mark them if they got out on some open spot on the ter- 
races where they could be stalked. As an ambush we chose a ledge 
in the cliff below a terrace with, in front, a breastwork of the natural 
rock some five feet high. It was perhaps fifty 3'ards from the trail. 
I hid myself on this ledge, having arranged on the rock breastw^ork a 
few pine branches through which to fire, and waited hour after hour, 
continually scanning the mountain carefully with the glasses. * * 
From time to time I peeped cautiously over the pine branches of the 



PAfRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



Ill 



breastwork; and tlie last time I did this I suddenly saw two goats 
that had come noiselessly down, standing motionless opposite to me, 
their suspicions evidently roused by something. I gently shoved the 
rifle over one of the boughs ; the largest goat turned its head sharply 
around to look as it stood quartering to me, and the bullet went 
fairly through the lungs. Both animals promptly ran off along the 
terrace, and I raced after them in my moccasins, skirting the edge 
of the cliff where there were no trees or bushes. As I made no noise 
and could run very swiftly along the bare clift edge I succeeded in 
coming out in the first little glade, or break, in the terrace at the 
same time that the goats did. The first to come out of the bushes 
was the big one I had shot at, an old she, as it turned out; while the 
other, a yearling ram, followed. The big one turned to look at me 
as she mounted a fallen tree that lay across a chasm-like rent in the 
terrace; the light red frothy blood covered her muzzle, and I paid 
no further heed to her as she slowly walked along the log, but bent 
my attention toward the yearling which was galloping and scramb- 
bling up an almost perpendicular path that led across the face of the 
cliff above. Holding my rifle just over it I fired, breaking the neck 
of the goat, and it rolled down some forty or fifty yards almost to 
where I stood." 

Both these slain goats proved good specimens, the old one being 
unusually large with magnificent horns. Mr. Roosevelt, an en- 
thusiast, praises all mountain game-hunting and never tires of speak- 
ing of the glow that the contest for capturing the wild denizens of 
the high peaks gives. His strong masculine mind rejoiced in the out- 
door life, the adventure, the daring and the danger. He understood 
pretty well the cities and towns of the Union, and he would under- 
stand the desert places of the land, its prairies and its mountains. He 
knew men; he knew politics; and he would know the noble wild ani- 
mals and their characteristics. He had the instincts of the born 



m 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



hunter, and while in the pudieus of the crowded capitals of the land 
he had his say and did his work, the prairie and the mountain and 
the plain called him, and he went there and became a Nimrod. 
Polished and educated men were his friends, statesmen, patriots; and 
he did not disclaim an equal friendship for the frontiersman and the 
cow-boy whose lives were passed away from the centers of present 
civilization while they blazed the way for a civihzation yet to be. 
Perhaps some of his happiest days were passed with nature in paths 
scarcely trod by the foot of man before he trod them, and in the 
exercise of his freedom on the American deserts and the peaks of the 
frowning mountains his blood was renewed, his muscles made 
stronger and more enduring, his brain and body cleared of morbid 
cityisms till he was prepared to go back into the vortex of the 
"strenuous" life of town and State and country that called him over 
and over again. 



CHAPTER VI. 



Republican Candidate for Mayor — Largest Republican Vote for Mayor ever 
Polled in New York — Civil Service Commission — How he "Ruined Himself" — 

Duties of Civil Service Commission — Abolishment of Abuses in Politics — 
Paper on Civil Service Reform — Case before LHI, Congress — In Office Six 

Years — Resignation to Accept Office as Police Commissioner of New York. 

IN the year 1886, Mr. Roosevelt was the Republican candidate for 
Mayor against Abram S. Hewitt, United Democracy, and 
Henry George, United Labor. Mr. Hewitt was elected by about 
22,000 plurality. 

The canvass was not very exciting, except that Henry George was 
a candidate, and the labor problem, according to the labor organs, 
was about to be solved. The honesty of Henry George was not im- 
pugned, while his principles, as interpreted by his followers, were 
not always convincing. It is doubtful if Mr. Roosevelt ever con- 
sidered his own election as a foregone conclusion. His speeches at 
the time published his now well-known attitude, though at the age 
of twenty-eight there had never before been a candidate for the New 
York mayoralty. He took his defeat in good part and retired, as 
much as a man of his virility in estimate of public affairs, could retire. 
He published his books and various articles in the magazines of the 
day, and enjoyed what his friends considered a well-earned rest, 
though that rest partook of the nature of rough traveling in the West 
for a part of the time. In 1889 he was appointed a member of the 
United States Civil Service Commission. By a strange conjunction 
of circumstances Mr. Roosevelt, author of the New York Civil 
Service law, was, through appointment as Civil Service Commis- 

aoner by President Harrison, put in a position in which, for half a 

UM 



114 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



dozen years, the enforcement of the national reform was largely in 
his hands. Many of the Republican and Democratic politicians were 
against the Civil Service act. Many members of Congress, of both 
parties, who voted for it did so on account of the tremendous popular 
pressure for its enactment which the assassination of Garfield, by a 
demented office-seeker two years earlier, had incited. These Con- 
gressmen would have been glad to see the act die of inanition. 

Commissioner Roosevelt did not share in this feeling. He gave 
most vigorous operation to the Civil Service act for at least two rea- 
sons: He decidedly favored this law. He held that all laws, bad as 
well as good, ought to be enforced, so that, if bad, the people could 
force their repeal, and the statute book cease to be cumbered by them. 
He enforced the act with so much vigor and intelligence that he 
called down upon himself the hostility of the party workers on both 
sides, and called it down so impartially that when President Cleve- 
land, in 1893, succeeded President Harrison he asked Harrison's 
appointee to remain in office, which he did for two years longer. In 
his six years of service Mr. Roosevelt added twenty thousand posts 
to the list under the scope of the merit law, or more than were placed 
on that roll in an equal length of time before or since. 

Of course he met with opposition. While in the gubernatorial 
election he had polled more votes than had ever been cast for any 
Republican candidate for Mayor of New York, and it was believed 
that he would have been elected had not so many Republicans voted 
for Hewitt in order to render George's defeat certain, there were 
those who said he was ''ruined," as he had "ruined himself" when in 
the Assembly at Albany because he fought "organization" measures 
and was neither academic nor Pickwickian in his attitude as to 
political corruption. He "ruined himself" again, and completely, 
by taking a place on the Civil Service Commission and standing 
across the path of the powerful politicians — the men w^ho elect and 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



115 



who control delegations to nominating conventions — on their hunt 
for patronage. When Mr. Roosevelt began his public career he was 
looked upon as a youthful faddist. The spoilsmen and those corrupt 
in politics laughed at him; they ridiculed him; and then they had to 
fight him. Those in public life for the money that was in it felt the 
sting of his scorn. He became a public figure at once. In the early 
eighties President Andrew D. White, of Cornell University, since 
Ambassador tO' Germany, said in the lecture-room of his college: 
*'Young gentlemen, some of you will enter public life. I call your 
attention to Theodore Roosevelt, now in our Legislature. He is on 
the right road to success. It is dangerous to predict a future for a 
young man, but let me say that if any man of his age was ever pointed 
straight for the Presidency that man is Theodore Roosevelt." 

Roosevelt at that time did more than command respect for reform 
ideas, he showed that it was possible to remain in office and be clean. 
He caused to be abolished in New York City several useless offices 
which were used to bleed the public treasury. He helped to abolish 
the joint responsibility of the Board of Aldermen with the Mayor in 
appointments to office. He investigated the Police Department of 
New York City and laid bare some of its iniquities. He recom- 
mended a single head for the Department, the necessity for which 
later he realized to the fullest degree. Then he secured the passage 
of the Civil Service Reform law of 1884, a law upon which the 
Federal statute was largely modeled. If he had done little else in his 
public life in the way o^ a service for the right, that law would have 
carried him high in the estimation of his fellow citizens. The wisdom 
of that legislation is naw u.niversally approved. The qualities of 
honesty and courage were never absent from him, and they had done 
their work. 

President Harrison made him Chairman of the Civil Service Com- 
mission of the United States in 1889. Brilliant as had been his work 



116 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



in other directions, never was he so deserving of the approval of his 
fehow countrymen than during the years he toiled to elevate the 
public service and to help bring it to its present state of efficiency. 
At that time, it would appear, he had little ambition for higher work. 
He had to face hostility on every side. He had to show that the 
scheme was practical. He countermined the enmity of certain Con- 
gressmen. His master stroke in this work was to hold examinations 
in various States and gradually to build up a following of office- 
holders, through merit, of scores of Congressmen. 

Roosevelt had to prove that a party did not need the minor offices 
to secure success before the people. He had to prove that it was 
good party politics to take the great mass of offices out of the domain 
of politics. It was bold and fearless work, and he succeeded in it. 

According to the new Commissioner's idea, ''no question of in- 
ternal administration is so important to the United States as the 
question of Civil Service reform, because the spoils system which can 
only be supplanted through the agencies which have found expres- 
siodi in the act creating the Civil Service Commission, has been for 
seventy years the most potent of all the forces tending to bring about 
the degradation of American politics. No republic can endure per- 
manently when its politics is base and oo«rrupt; and the spoils system, 
the application in political life of the degrading doctrine that 'to the 
victor belong| the spoils,' produces corruption and degi»adation. The 
man who is in politics for the offices might just as well be in politics 
for the money he can get for his vote, so far as the general good is 
concerned. When the then Vice-President of the United States, 
Mr. Hendricks, said that he 'wished to take the boys in out af the 
cold to Avarm their toes,' thereby meaning that he wished to distribute 
offices among the more active 'heelers,' to the rapturous enthusiasm 
of the latter, he uttered a sentiment which was morally on the same 
plane with a wish to give 'the boys' five dollars apiece all around for 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 117 

their votes, and fifty dollars apiece when they showed themselves 
sufficiently active in bullying, bribing and cajoling other voters. 
Such a sentiment should bar any man from public life, and will bar 
him whenever the people grow to realize that the worst enemies of 
the Republic are the demagogue and the corruptionist. The spoils- 
monger and the spoils-seeker invariably breed the bribe-taker and 
bribe-giver — the embezzler of public funds and the corrupter of 
voters. Civil Service reform is not merely a movement to better the 
public service. It achieves this end, too; but its main purpose is to 
raise the tone of public life, and it is in this direction that its effects 
have been of incalculable good to the whole community." 

For six years, from May, 1889, to May, 1895, Mr. Roosevelt was 
a member of the National Civil Service Commission. The aim of 
the Commission was always to procure the extension of the classified 
Service as rapidly as possible, and to see that the law was administered 
thoroughly and fairly. The Commission did not have the power 
which Mr. Roosevelt thought it should have, and in many instances 
there were violations and evasions of the law in certain bureaus or 
departments, and the Commission was unable to hinder them, though 
in every case the Commission made a good fight and gave the widest 
publicity to the wrongdoing. Often when the Commission could not 
win the actual fight in which they were engaged, the fact of their 
having made it, and the other fact that they were wilHng to repeat 
the fight on provocation, put a stop to a repetition of the offense. 
Consequently, while there were many violations and evasions their 
proportion became smaller and smaller in time. In the aggregate, 
it is said that it is doubtful if one per cent, of all the many employe 
have been dismissed for purely political reasons. Taking it anoth 
way, where under the old system of spoils a hundred men had been 
turned out, under the Civil Service ninety-nine men were kept in 
office. 



118 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



In the administration of the law very much depends upon the Com- 
mission. With a combative mind, yet Mr. Roosevelt was most 
receptive. He had learned much in his years of public life; the Civil 
Service Commission was to teach him more. He understood the 
needs of reform in the Civil Service and he did his best to carry to a 
consummation such measures as should ensure the betterment of it. 
He said that good heads of departments and bureaus would ad- 
minister it well anyhow; though not only the bad men, but also the 
more numerous class of men who are weak, rather than bad, are sure 
to administer a law poorly unless kept up to the mark. He thought 
the public should exercise a more careful scrutiny over the appoint- 
ments and over the acts of the Civil Service Commissioners, for there 
was no office the effectiveness of which depends so much upon the 
way in which the man himself chooses to construe his duties. A 
Commissioner could keep within the letter of the law and do his 
routine work, and yet accomplish nothing at all in the way of 
securing the observance of the law. Always a painstaking man, with 
an eye for detail, he made the execution of his duties in the Com- 
mission as difficult to himself as he felt that he was in honor bound to 
do. He felt that the Comnlission, to do useful work, must be fearless 
and wideawake; that it must actively interfere wherever wrong was 
done, and must take all the steps that could be taken to secure the 
punishment of the wrongdoer and to protect the employee who was 
threatened by the powers-that-be. 

This course he consistently followed throughout his connection 
with the Commission. He was a RepubHcan from the North. Two 
of the members were from the South— Democrats who had served 
in the Confederate army — but in all the dealings with one and the 
other of the Commissioners there was no single instance wherein 
the politics of any person was so much as taken into account in any 
case that arose. The force of the Commission itself was chosen 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



121 



through competitive examinations, and included men of every party 
and from every section of the country. 

Says Mr. Roosevelt: "From the beginning of the present system 
each President of the United States has been its friend (the Com- 
mission's) but no President has been a radical Civil Service reformer. 
Presidents Arthur, Harrison and Cleveland have all desired to see the 
Service extended, and to see the law well administered. No one of 
them has felt willing or able to do all that the reformers asked or to 
pay much heed to their wishes, save as regards that portion of the 
Service to which the law actually applied. Each has been a sincere 
party man who has felt strongly on such questions as those of the 
tariff, of finance, and of our foreign policy, and each has been obliged 
to conform more or less closely to the wishes of his party associates 
and fellow party leaders; and, of course, these party leaders and the 
party politicians generally wished the offices to be distributed as they 
had been ever since Andrew Jackson became President. In con- 
sequence, the offices outside the protection of the law have still been 
treated under every administration as patronage, to be disposed of 
in the interest of the dominant party. An occasional exception has 
been made here and there, * * =1^ j^^^j- s^yltii altogether insignifi- 
cant exceptions the great bulk of the non-classified places have been 
changed for political reasons by each administration, the officeholders 
politically opposed to the administration being supplanted or suc- 
ceeded by political adherents of the administration." 

The Cabinet officers, though often not Civil Service reformers 
originally, usually become such before their terms of office expire. 
This was true without exception of all the Cabinet officers with whom 
Mr. Roosevelt was brought into personal contact while he was on 
the Commission. Moreover, from their high position and their ap- 
preciation of the responsibility of their offices, Cabinet officers are 
certain to refrain from a personal violation of the law, while they will 



122 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



try to secure a formal compliance with its demands on the part of 
their subordinates. 

''In most cases it is necessary, however, to goad them continually 
to see that they do not allow their subordinates to evade the law," 
to quote Mr. Roosevelt in his article on ''Civil Service Reform," "and 
it is very difficult to get either the President or the head of a Depart- 
ment to punish these subordinates when they have evaded it." 

There was not much open violation of the law during his in- 
cumbency, because such violation could be reached through the 
courts; but in the small ofhces and bureaus an unscrupulous chief of 
an office or bureau may persecute his subordinates who are politically 
opposed to him, if he have the chance, and force them to resign; or 
to trump up charges against them which will cause them to be 
dismissed. 

"If this is done in a sufficient number of cases men of the opposite 
political party think that it is useless to enter the examinations; and 
by staying out they leave the way clear for the offender to get pre- 
cisely the men he wishes for the eligible registers." 

Against this chicanery Mr. Roosevelt was very severe. But the 
cases were isolated. In some of the Departments this form of evasion 
was never tolerated, and where the Commission had the force under 
its eye the chances of injustice were few. Congress had control of 
the appropriations for the Commission, and as it could not do its 
w^ork with ample funds the action of Congress was vital to its 
welfare. 

"Many even of the friends of the system in the country at large are 
astonishingly ignorant of who the men are who have battled most 
effectively for the law and for good government in either the Senate 
or the Lower House. It is not only necessary that a man shall be 
good and possess the desire to do decent things, but it is also neces- 
sary that he shall be courageous, practical and efficient if his work is 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



123 



to amount to anything. There is a good deal of rough-and-tumble 
fighting in Congress, as there is in all our poHtical life, and a man 
is entirely out of place in it if he does not possess the virile qualities, 
and if he fails to show himself ready and able to hit back when 
assailed. Moreover, he must be alert, vigorous and intelligent if he 
is going to make his work count. The friends of the Civil Service, 
like the friends of all other laws, would be in a bad way if they had 
to rely solely upon the backing of the timid good." 

Mr. Roosevelt has never been averse to taking his part in a 
vigorous argument, and he was often called upon to have a share in 
these arguments while he was on the Commission. His article on 
the Civil Service is so full of comprehension of the subject that one is 
tempted to quote it lengthily in order to convey an understanding 
of his attitude when he was so often assailed by the money-getting 
politicians who opposed his ideas of reform. 

"There is need of further legislation," he explains, "to perfect and 
extend the law and the system ; but Congress has never been willing 
seriously to consider a proposition looking to this extension. * 
On the other hand, efforts to repeal the law or to destroy it by new 
legislation have uniformly been failures and have rarely gone beyond 
•a committee. Occasionally, in an appropriation bill or some other 
measure, an amendment will be slipped through adding forty of fifty 
employees to the classified service, or providing that the law shall 
not apply to them; but nothing important has ever been done in this 
way." 

In the final session of the Fifty-third Congress an incident oc- 
curred which deserves to be related in full, as it affords an example 
of the many cases which arise to test the efficiency of the friends of 
reform in Congress. According to the original law of 1883, the 
Secretary of the Commission was allowed a salary of sixteen hundred 
dollars a year. As the Commission's work and force grew the 



124 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



salary in a successive appropriation bill allowed was two thousand 
a year. Many of the clerks under the Secretary received eighteen 
hundred dollars, so that it would have been absurd to reduce the 
Secretary's salary below that of his subordinates. Many other 
officials of the Government have had their salaries increased in suc- 
cessive appropriation bills, over the sum originally provided, in pre- 
cisely the same way that the salary of the Secretary of the Commis- 
sion was increased. The Fifty-third Congress under President Cleve- 
land was Democratic, and the Secretary of the Commission was him- 
self a Democrat. According to the rules of the House, ''there shall 
be no increase of salary beyond that provided in existing law in any 
appropriation bill." AVhen the appropriation for the Civil Service 
Commission came up before the House, the gentleman from Ken- 
tucky, Mr. Breckinridge, made the point that to give two thousand 
dollars to the Secretary of the Commission was to add to his salary 
four hundred dollars increase over the sum allowed by the original 
law of 1883, and was consequently out of order. At the same time 
he exhibited a list of twenty or thirty other officers whose salaries had 
likewise been increased. He withdrew his point of order as regarded 
these other persons, but he adhered to it as affecting the Secretary 
of the Commission. The Chairman of the Committee of the Whole, 
Mr. O'Neill, of Massachusetts, sustained the point of order, and there 
was no objection made by any one nor any fight made, and the bill 
passed the House and the Secretary's salary was reduced. The point 
of order w-as probably ill-taken. The existing law^ was and had been 
for ten years tliat the salary should be two thousand dollars. Had 
there been a Congressman alert to the situation and willing to fight, 
the whole movement might have been stopped by making a similar 
point of order against those other officers, the President's private 
secretary, the First Assistant Postmaster-General, the Assistant 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 125 

Secretary of State and the others whose increased salaries were ex- 
cused from Mr. Breckinridge's animadversion. Had a Congressman 
raised this point the House would have refused tO' cut down the 
salaries of all these officials, and a man with resolution, and who in- 
sisted that all or none should be reduced, could have saved the salary 
of the Secretary of the Civil Service Commission. Many of the Con- 
gressmen would have done as much had it been pointed out to them, 
but no one did so. However, when it got over to the Senate the 
Civil Service reformers had friends to whom coaching was unneces- 
sary. ''In the first place, the Sub-Committee on Appropriations, 
composed of Messrs. Teller, Cockrell and AlHson, to which the Civil 
Service Commission section was referred, restored the salary to two 
thousand dollars. But Senator Gorman succeeded in carrying, by 
a bare majority, the Appropriations Committee against it, and it was 
reported to the full Senate at sixteen hundred dollars." 

As soon as it got into the full Senate, Senator Lodge had his 
chance at it. He was in favor of the increase and he let it be known 
that he would receive ample support in insisting upon adding four 
hundred to the sixteen. All that he had to do was to show the 
absolute folly of the reduction provision put in by Mr. Breckinridge, 
and kept in. He made it evident that he meant to make a resolute 
fight and not to come out worsted. The opposition made no show 
at all, and collapsed without being put to a further test. The salary 
was put back to two thousand dollars, and in that form the bill 
became a law. 

If we are to have good legislation or if we are to have bad — that 
is, if we are to have it forwarded — depends greatly upon the com- 
position of the Committees on Civil Service reform of the Senate 
and the Lower House. The personnel of these Committees, there- 
fore, is of great importance. They are charged with the duty of in- 
vestigating complaints against the Commission, and if ever the Com- 



126 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



mission becomes corrupt or inefficient it should be unsparingly ex- 
posed in Congress. It is equally important that the falsity of un- 
truthful charges made against it should be made public. 

'The main fight in each session comes on the Appropriation bill. 
There is not the slightest danger that the bill will be repealed, and 
there is not much danger that any President will suffer it to be so 
laxly administered as to deprive it of value; though there is always 
need to keep a vigilant lookout for fear of such lax administration. 
The danger point is in the appropriations. The first Civil Service 
Commission, established in the days of President Grant, was starved 
out by Congress refusing to appropriate for it. A hostile Congress 
could repeat the same course now; and as a matter of fact, in every 
Congress resolute efforts are m.ade by the champions of foul govern- 
ment and dishonest politics to cut off the Commission's supplies. 
The bolder men who come from districts where little is known of the 
law, and where there is no adequate expression of intelligent and 
honest opinion on the subject, attack it openly. They are always 
joined by a number who make the attack covertly under some point 
of order, or because of a nominal desire for economy. These are quite 
as dangerous as the others and deserve exposure. Every man in- 
terested in decent government should keep an eye on his Congress- 
man and see how he votes on the question of appropriations for the 
Commission." 

The opposition to the reform is usually led by skilled parliamentari- 
ans, and they fight with the vigor of men who see a chance to strike 
at an institution which has baffled their greed. The rank and file, 
as a rule, is made up of politicians who cannot rise in public life 
because of their attitude on any public question, and who possess 
most of their power in the skill with which they manipulate the 
politics of their districts. "These men have a gift of offlce-mongering, 
just as other men have a peculiar knack in picking pockets; and they 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



127 



are joined by all the honest dull men who vote wrong out of pure 
ignorance, and by a very few sincere and intelligent but wholly mis- 
guided people. Many of the spoils leaders are both efficient and fear- 
less and able to strike hard blows. In consequence, the leaders on 
the side of decency must themselves be men of ability and force or 
the cause will suffer." 

More and more does Mr. Roosevelt insist upon the importance 
of the Civil Service Commission in the interests of good government. 
He would teach all men to govern themselves politically and through 
such government to make a good selection of the men who are to 
represent them in the State and in Congress. His own honesty and 
uprightness make him harsh upon any approach to the opposite 
qualities in others, and he holds as dishonest and untruthful the voter 
who refuses or does not have sufficient interest in the matter to look 
into the aims and character of the men for whom he votes at the 
polls. The Civil Service reform meant with him refomi reaching clear 
into the most insignificant of ward politics. Placemen were the decay 
at the core of good government, whether that good government were 
in the white palace at Washington or a director of a school in a 
thinly inhabited country town. He insists that the country has a 
preponderance of good men in it and that the bad men are only in 
evidence because of the inertia of the good who are, thus, the up- 
holders of the bad. Civil Service reform is the strength this inertia 
calls into being, the natural outcome of a state of affairs which should 
never have come about, but which having come will not easily be rid 
of until a healthful lesson of constant defeat has been taught it. 
Noteworthy is it that those who have done most effective work in 
Washington in the departments for the Civil Service reform law are 
men of unimpeachable character, who show by their public life that 
they are able and resolute and devoted to a high ideal. Much of 
what they have done has not been commented on by the public 



128 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



because much of the work in committee, and some of that in the 
House, such as making and opposing points of order, and pointing- 
out the merits and defects of certain bills, is not of the sort readily 
understood or appreciated by the outsiders. Yet few men have de- 
served better of their country, "for there is in American public life 
no one other cause so fruitful of harm to the body-politic as the spoils 
system, and the legislators and administrative officers who have done 
the best work toward its destruction merit a peculiar meed of praise 
from all well-wishers of the Republic." 

j\Ir. Roosevelt is outspoken on all occasions, mincing matters as 
little as is consistent with a good manner. High and low who enter 
into competitive public life must expect criticism, and he has not 
spared it in his written as well as his spoken speech. He advises 
that all departmental officers and heads of bureaus, and especially 
the Commissioners themselves, be carefully watched by all friends of 
the reform. They are to be supported when they do well, and con- 
demned when they go wrong, while attention should be called not 
onlv to what they do but also to what they leave undone. Xor is 
the President himself to be exempted from this scrutiny. Regarding 
Senators and Congressmen he thinks, in this regard there is urgent 
need that they be carefully supervised by the friends of the law of 
reform. 

''We need criticism by those who are unable to do their part in 
action; but the criticism to be useful must be both honest and intelli- 
o-ent. and the critics must remember that the svstem has its stanch 
friends and bitter foes among both party men and men of no party — 
among Republicans, Democrats and Independents. Each Congress- 
man should be made to feel that it is his duty to support the law, 
and that he will be held to account if he fails to support it. ^' * * 
People sometimes grow a little down-hearted about the reform. 
When they feel in this mood it would be well for them to reflect on 



MR. ROOSKVKLT IX illS GARDEN AT UYSTKR BAY 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



131 



what has actually been gained in the past six years. (This was 
written in 1895.) By the inclusion of the railway mail service, the 
smaller free-delivery offices, the Indian School Service, the Internal 
Revenue Service, and other less important branches, the extent of the 
public service which is under the protection of the law has been more 
than doubled, and there are now nearly fifty thousand employees of 
the Federal Government who have been withdrawn from the de- 
grading influences that rule under the spoils system. This of itself 
is a great success and a great advance, though of course it ought only 
to spur us on to renewed effort. In the fall of 1894 the people of the 
State of New York by a popular vote put into their constitution a 
provision providing for a merit system in the affairs of the State and 
its municipalities; and the following spring the great city of Chicago 
voted by an overwhelming majority in favor of applying in its 
municipal affairs the advanced and radical Civil Service Reform Law, 
which had already passed the Illinois Legislature. Undoubtedly after 
every success there comes a moment of reaction. The friends of the 
reform grow temporarily lukewarm, or because it fails to secure every 
thing they hoped they neglect to lay proper stress upon all that it 
does secure. Yet in spite of all rebuffs, in spite of all disappointments 
and opposition, the growth of the principle of Civil Service reform 
has been continually more rapid and every year has taken us meas- 
urably nearer that ideal of pure and decent government which is dear 
to the heart of every honest American citizen." 

With these inspiring words he closes one of the very best articles 
ever written on reform in politics, and in the years when he had so 
ably served on the Commission he missed no opportunity by voice or 
pen to promulgate his theories regarding pure politics, and so effec- 
tually that he won thousands to his way of thinking. For while it 
may be true that Americans love to be fooled, there comes a time 
in the experience of the citizen of ''the States" when he asks himself 



132 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



who is the one who is doing the fooling. Mr. Roosevelt answered 
that question so far as false politics was concerned, and his hearers 
became his adherents. His ofBce as Commissioner was held in all 
honor and there was never a moment when his most adverse critic 
might say he had been caught napping. In this stern attention to 
the business he had started out to do in reforming the Civil Service 
he ''ruined himself" politically as many who disagreed with his 
methods were prone to say once more. Mr. Roosevelt continued in 
his office as Commissioner till May, 1895, when he resigned to accept 
the office of Police Commissioner from Mayor Strong of New York. 



CHAPTER VII. 



Department of Police— Augury of Defeat— No Sentiment for Professional Poli- 
ticians — Enforcement of Laws — Improving Police Force — Gaining Respect — 

Opposition — Strike Leaders— Abuse Stopped — Attacked by Certain News- 
papers—Adverse Criticisms — Methods Reviled — Forging Ahead. 

IT was augured that Mr. Roosevelt would not make a success of 
it as an overseer of the police force of the Metropolis. The 
Department had been conducted on rather independent prin- 
ciples, and would scarcely put up with a rule which it would consider 
arrogant and which would interfere with its manner heretofore of 
doing pretty much as it pleased. The new man was known to have 
little at stake in politics; he feared neither boss nor heeler; he was 
reported to be incorruptible, while his means were such as made 
bribery of no account to him. At the same time, his record in the 
offices he had already held was to the effect that he was a martinet, 
holding every man to a strict account in the carrying out of the duties 
undertaken by him; and the police were now to come under his super- 
vision and control. The only thing for the corruptionists and windy 
ward and district men to do was to make the office untenable by him 
— to harass him in the ways which had more than once been adopted 
when a man was placed in office and was unpopular in his methods. 
For no method could be popular that did not cater to Tammany 
Hall — that great octopus whose feelers went out to suck in the gains 
of bad legislation and faulty government — the institution relied upon 
by the politician who adopted the rule of fellow citizens for what 
could be made out of the office by fair means or foul. 

Surprise was expressed by the friends of Mr. Roosevelt that he 
should take the office of supervising a body of men long known to 

— - 133 



134 



THEOT)ORE ROOSEVELT. 



be the willing tools of the baser element in poHtics, and whom a 
man of his scholarly attainment might scarcely hope to bring out of 
the wretched rut into which it had sunk in the years of its gross mis- 
management and use for party purposes. 

He entered upon his duties at once — duties which were to be no 
sinecure, and which, perhaps, were to be marked in his Hfe as the 
most difficult he ever undertook. He asked for no sympathy. He 
went into the work with the determination to do what was expected 
of him by that large contingency of fellow citizens who, having with- 
held practical remonstrance too long, saw themselves menaced and 
their rights uprooted by a department supposed to have been origin- 
ally established for the protection of the privileges of this very class of 
people. But they had let things go on an easy jog-trot; for the 
ordinary American citizen, absorbed by business cares and the 
making straight the tangle of complex professional life, thinks little 
of his city government until it misbehaves itself, and he finds that 
what he thought was a midge necessary for the seasons, turns out 
to be a scorpion that makes every season its own. The usual evangel 
had gone forth, that if men of decency and weight in the community 
would only attend the primary elections, and do their duty in the letter 
of the law by a close scrutiny of the worth or worthlessness of those 
who were proposed to represent them, there would be little to com- 
plain of. But the primaries had long ago been given up to the men 
who made politics a business, while the newspapers were misleading 
in the extreme. If a man were on the side of the party controlling a 
newspaper he was an angel; if he were on the other side he was 
something so far below the angelic state that there was no use talking 
about him. Each paper had its own store of angels ready to take 
wing to the benighted country and save it through the efficaciousness 
of their purity of intention and ability to lift it from the slough of 
despond; and if you had a choice, all you had to do was to make your 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



135 



selection of journals and have detailed to you the immaculate pro- 
clivities of the seraphic brood only waiting your permission to swoop 
down upon the land and protect it forever. The American voter 
is more often amused than not by the gush of his favorite vehicles for 
the dissemination of the happenings of the day, and the man who 
is amused by the extravagant praise or blame of the organs of his 
political party Ls the man who considers the primary elections of little 
account; for he makes up his mind that when an aspirant to office is 
nominated, if he does not like him he will not vote for him — unless 
he is so party-imbued as to vote for any man at all his party advocates, 
so as to not go against his principles as a Republican or a Democrat. 
Little by little the Police Department had, to a large degree, come to 
control politics in the city, until the misrule and corruption made an 
Augean stable Avhich the new president of the Police Board was ex- 
pected to clean out. irrespective of "ring" rule and the heretofore 
unopposed governing power of those in authority. 

'Mr. Roosevelt at once let it be seen what he meant to do. He had 
no sentiment for the men who made of politics a means to an end; 
he had as little feeling for other men. who would not go against their 
chosen party, though the city should sink for want of such opposition. 
He assailed the corruptionists, tricksters and incompetents in his new 
jurisdiction as vigorously as he had attacked abuses while in the 
Legislature and at the head of the Civil Service Commission. 

Blackmailers, bribers, bulldozers and bushwhackers of all sorts 
combined against him, doing all they could to thwart and puzzle 
him; but he overthrew them all, or nearly all. for lie was not the man 
to accept defeat unless overpowered, and he saw no reason why he 
should now be overpoAvered. He enforced the liquor laws and the 
Sunday laAvs, and the corner groggery-keepers to a man hated him 
and tried to dodge his decree by a liberal use of back-doors, though 
the fact of the front entrance being barred against the better class of 



136 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



the thirsty told against the income at the bar, Americans being prone 
to object to back entrances when there is a front one. An American 
is an inalienable citizen, whether he be born on the soil or ''takes out 
his papers" after the prescribed length of residence, though he may 
have been born ten thousand miles from the sight of the dome on 
the capitol at Washington. Mr. Roosevelt reformed and trans- 
formed the police force from the Superintendent, whose removal he 
made imperative; punished the shiftless and venal, while he rewarded 
and praised the honest and efficient. His personal qualities were 
constantly displayed; he did not make the laws, but he was in office 
to enforce them and enforce them he must, or sink his honor and 
respectabihty. 

Threats to legislate him out of office moved him not to swerve from 
the high standard he had determined on, but only served to make 
him force his foes to abandon their plans. Scorn, abuse and ridicule 
were heaped upon him, but he was firm, and had no symptom of 
giving in to a horde that antagonized him by a flagrant abuse of 
power and an utter disregard of the rights of the community. He 
was told that he would "wreck his partly." He knew better; he was 
a politician, and he knew that persistence in the right never yet 
wrecked a party. 

He made the police force cleaner than it ever was before. He 
appointed solely on their merits, and without regard to their political 
tendencies, seventeen hundred new men for the further protection 
of the city. He caused sterner and fairer ideas a sto police methods 
to come into existence. Loot and blackmail were to disappear 
almost entirely under his regime, and decency to prevail. He did 
not attempt the impossible, and he had no vague theories as to the 
reformation of mankind; he knew man, and he knew that man insists 
that he has an inalienable privilege to do right or wrong according 
to other men's ideas of right or wrong; but Mr. Roosevelt prevented 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



137 



this privilege from becoming that license which means the open 
violation of the restrictions made for the good order of society and 
the preservation of peace and respectability^ Crime began to sneak 
away; there was a searchlight on it, and strong illumination is not a 
good friend to ill-doing. New electric lights placed in old hithertO' 
dark places will do much to disclose foul blots which of necessity must 
be expunged, or at least made cleaner. 

He did not accomplish all he desired, but he made the city cleaner 
and less corrupt than it had been for years, while the police force 
under him took on an appearance of upri^ghtness scarcely seen before 
in it. 

''During Mr. Roosevelt's incumbency," says a friend of his, ''it 
was my privilege to enjoy his friendship and his confidence to some 
extent. I have sat beside him in his trials of policemen, and have 
been with him alone when he was dealing with the most confidential 
matters in the department. I have even listened to him dictate his 
private letters, remaining with him at his request, and 1 know abso- 
lutely that the sole idea which inspired him was a sense of the loftiest 
devotion to the public good. I know men who were closer to him 
than I ever could expect to be, and their experience with him, related 
to me in private, simply tallies with my own. He was conservative 
to the last degree when justice and right were to be considered. He 
was radical to the utmost limits when injustice and wrong were to be 
swept away. He could not do all that he wished, but when he left 
that office he was the friend of every honest man in the department, 
and the New York police force was nearer what it should be than 
ever it was before. Theodore Roosevelt was safe in that office, and 
none knew it better than those who did wrong and wished to prosti- 
tute the police force to evil ends." 

No matter how men may have differed with him touching his policy 
and beliefs, or even his methods of administration, no one can deny 



138 



TPIEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



that he contracted the business of his office with an energy marked 
by enthusiasm, and that he accompHshed much. The lot of the 
patrohiian became better, he grew to be a more self-respecting and 
more efficient man, and the whole police force was of a higher plane. 
Tammany misrule was put down for the time being and a sadly dis- 
organized body of men fattening on the public treasury hated the one 
man who told them they were all wrong in their methods and proved 
it by taking away from them much of the emolument to which they 
had no right. To a friend who expressed astonishment that a literary 
man should become PoHce Commissioner, Mr. Roosevelt said: 

'T thought the storm center was in New York, and so I came 
here. It is a great piece of practical work. I like to take hold of a 
piece of work that has been done by a Tammany leader and do it as 
well, only by approaching it from the opposite direction. A thing 
that attracted it to me was that it was to be done in the hurly-burly, 
for I do not like cloister life." 

His enforcement of the excise law produced an abundance of hurly- 
burly. Many said it was the most potent factor in the overthrow of 
the Strong reform administration at the next election and the return 
of Tammany to power; but Mr. Roosevelt answered all criticisms 
that the laws had been made before he came into office and that he 
must enforce them or sacrifice his self-respect and the respect of all 
right-minded citizens. Moreover, he maintained that the best way to 
obtain the repeal of an obnoxious law was by rigidly enforcing it, 
and not by ignoring it — the enforcement of a measure unpopular or 
offensive to people showed them how wrong they had been in sup- 
porting it in the first instance, and if they chafed under it when it 
was put into execution they had only themselves to blame and might 
remedy it when they were given a choice to make a better law to 
supplant it. Such grim humor might not be appreciated, but it 
made people understand the man they had to deal with, and as he had 



MR. ROOSEVELT CAMPAIGNING IN NEW YORK— A SHORT STO P 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



141 



often before said in substance the same thing they must now consider 
his words. The better classes were with him, though he might have 
said that the better classes always took care of themselves, and his 
words were leveled at the wrongdoer and the careless citizen unap- 
preciative of his rights and who could not, thus, be considered as be- 
longing to the better classes. His unheralded personal tours of in- 
spection about the city at night caught many a policeman napping, 
and resulted in many awkward situations, until the force assimilated 
the idea that their chief was a man who was not to be taken too 
lightly and to whom trifling was a weighty thing. 

Riis, the author of ''How the Other Half Lives," saw considerable 
of Police Commissioner Roosevelt, for the author of the pitiful book 
regarding the sad lives of the ''submerged" was also looking about 
him. Touching the Commissioner's single-minded fearlessness in 
office, Mr. Riis says: 

"I read a story when I was a boy about a man, who pursued by a 
relentless enemy, dwelt in security because of his belief that his plot- 
ting could not hurt an honest man. Mr. Roosevelt constantly made 
me think of him. He spoke of it only once, but I saw him act out 
that belief a hundred times. Mulberry street could never have been 
made to take any stock in it. When Mulberry street failed to awe 
Roosevelt, it tried to catch him. Jobs innumerable were put up to 
discredit the president of the board and inveigle him into awkward 
positions. Probably he never knew of one-tenth of them. Mr. 
Roosevelt walked through them with perfect unconcern, kicking 
aside the snares that were set so elaborately to catch him. The 
politicians who saw him walk apparently blindly into a trap and be- 
held him emerge with damage to the trap only, could not understand 
it. They concluded that it was his luck. It was not. It was his sense. 
He told me once after such a time that it was a matter of conviction 



142 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



with him, that no frank and honest man could be in the long run en- 
tangled by the snares of plotters, whatever appearances might for the 
moment indicate. So he walked unharmed in it all." 

Of Mr. Roosevelt's attitude toward strikers j\Ir. Riis says: ''I had 
watched the police administration in Mulberry street for nearly 
twenty years, and I had seen many sparring matches between work- 
ingmen and the Police Board. Generally there was bad faith on one 
side; not infrequently on both. It was human that some of the labor 
men should misinterpret Mr. Roosevelt's motives when, as president 
of the board, he sent word that he wanted to meet them and talk 
strike troubles over with them. They got it into their heads, I sup- 
pose, that he had come to crawl; but they were speedily undeceived. 
I can see his face now as he checked the first one who hinted at 
trouble. I fancy that man can see it toO' — in his dreams, 'Gentle- 
men,' said ]\Ir. Roosevelt, T have come to get your point of view, 
and see if we can't agree to help each other out. But we want to 
make it clear to ourselves at the start that the greatest damage any 
workingman can do to his cause is to counsel violence. Order must 
be maintained, and, make no mistake, I will maintain it.' I tingled 
with pride when they cheered him to the echo. They had come to 
meet a politician. They met a man, and they knew him at sight." 

An honest man had touched the nature of other honest men by 
his honest}'. Theodore Roosevelt believes that this countiw can be 
better governed by appealing to men's virtues than by catering to 
their vices. It is this very characteristic of his that the professional 
politicians and a part of the newspapers of the country could not 
understand, and they kept harping on the wrong he was doing the 
Republican party by antagonizing the opposite party so much that 
there would be constant clues against his side of politics at every 
election. They thought there was a middle course, that as the eftect 
of a poison is often counteracted by the administration of another 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



poison, on the principle that like cures like, so there might b^a way 
of lessening the evils that had crept into the police departme'nt by 
a closing of the eyes to acts that had grown to be regarded mere 
peccadilloes, technicalities, or some other term applicable to describe 
a deviation from the spirit of the law. But ^Ir. Roosevelt went into 
the heart of the matter, regarded the adherence to the strict letter of 
the law as a foregone conclusion and recognized no middle course. 
With singular directness he called a bribe a bribe, not a present, while 
a blackmailer was a miserable wretch and a menace to societv at 
large. If he did not mind making a ''ruin" of his own future pos- 
sibilities, at least he should save his party from loss of votes by a little 
care in carrying out his ideas of reform, said others. He lost friends, 
newspapers had in them exaggerated portraits of him which they 
called cartoons, and lampoons on his characteristics were published 
in several parts of the country. The professional politician had 
hoarded up a grievance against him for his activity in Civil Service 
reform and now was the chance to make it public under the plea of 
sympathy for the Republican party which he "was doing so much to 
make unpopular" in a city, if not a State and several States, where 
it had never had the firm power of being the party of the majority. 
But, as he would have said, if his party could not stand his acts, if 
they had made a mistake in choosing him now, and then to represent 
it in an office, then the fault was theirs, not his, they should have 
known him better when they made their choice, for he had never been 
vague or mystical in his intercourse with it. As for himself, he was in 
an office which he had sworn to serve with the best of his ability, and 
his understanding of that ability was that it was his duty to put into 
active practice the laws long ago made for the governing of the office, 
but which had gradually grown weak and languishing and sometimes 
waxed into the semblance of death, though they never had been re- 
pealed. Repeal the laws, but do not break them; make other laws, 



144 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



but keep them. And until new laws were made the old should and 
would be carried out so far as he was concerned no matter if he made 
or broke his party. It was a miserable party if it relied upon illegali- 
ties to bolster it up, rather let it go to pieces and from its wreck build 
up another which should be so strong in its legal rights as to defy 
all assaults made upon it. But the party would not break, it would 
suffer nothing at his hands. Rather, he was strengthening it when 
he carried out the provisions of an office which should be above party 
interest and so neutral that Republican and Democrat had an equally 
fair show so far as it was concerned. 

Tammany Hall had derived no small share of its sustenance from 
enforcing some laws and accepting bribes for the non-enforcement 
of others. It had therefore accustomed the people of New York to 
the spectacle of an omnipotent and irresponsible Legislature and con- 
stitutional convention combined, which thrived by extending pro- 
tection to the adult and infant industries of a vicious nature. Mr. 
Roosevelt's interpretation of the constitution and laws disclosed the 
existence of no such nullifying agency, and the shame-trodden and 
sin-beset creatures might know that their rights were not all dead 
even though their best of life had gone, and the child wronged could 
raise up friends who were no longer afraid of the powers that be. 
The oath taken by the Police Commissioner was to enforce laws, not 
amend or repeal them, and there was no law on any statute book 
which offered protection to any class of citizens who broke them, as 
there was none that made of any other class a mass of victims for 
rapacious despots. 

The Italian padrone could no longer import cripples to be used as 
beggars on paying for the privilege; the tenements could not use their 
padded lists of voters for election purposes; the denizens of the 
tenderloin district were no longer compelled to pay over to the police 
captains certain weekly or monthly sums to prevent house-raiding, 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



145 



the dives could not carry on open gambling and petty lotteries if the 
owners or proprietors of them put their hands in their pockets and 
transfer what they there found to the pockets of the blue-coats who 
were sworn to keep the peace. Of course the Commission made 
enemies, but not among men like Mr. Riis who had spent the best 
years of his life in looking out the abuses of the poor and oppressed, 
and who saw in the brothel and the gambling hell and the groggery 
the first cause of four-fifths of the poverty and crime in the big city. 

A police force is essentially a military force. The chief of the 
police department in New York (or any city) who has thousands of 
men under him, ought to have the same high character and the same 
sort of abilities as those of a Major-General. Such a man should 
have the capacity and the character to command the respect of 
gentlemen as well as those of gamblers and thugs. His friends 
should not be law-breakers, but men who stand for the strength of 
the community in business and professional circles. He should have 
an absolutely clean name and should be a man whose integrity is not 
under even a shadow of doubt. The uprightness of such a man 
must affect every man under him; his personal character will be felt 
instantly and will stimulate those of weak and uncertain resolution 
if left to themselves, and destroy those of criminal tendencies. Can 
an honest, clean, able man exert such a power and do it almost as 
soon as he enters upon his duties? When Theodore Roosevelt was 
President of the Board of Police Commissioners this very thing 
happened. When he came into Police Headquarters with his quick 
nervous stride, every policeman in sight would straighten up as 
though an electric current had been shot into him. Yet Mr. Roose- 
velt was not the chief of Police. Between him and the chief there 
was a network of legal barriers. But he broke the barriers down. 
More than that, sustained by only one of his three associates, and that 
one of a different political faith, he nevertheless sent the force of his 



146 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



integrity down the line so that it was felt by the lowest man in the 
department. 

Character and not "pnll" began to count at once, ^len were pro- 
moted because they were lit. There was no open alliance with crime 
by the police. Vice was made to seek cover. It was impossible to 
stamp it out, but it was not encouraged for the sake of money, as 
had been the case previously. The police, except in a few cases, 
ceased to blackmail. Justice was dealt out to the men on trial. ]\Ir. 
Roosevelt would stop and consider how he could be absolutely fair, 
and his decisions would have immediate result. As the candidates 
for appointment came up for private examination as to their fitness, 
searching inquiries would be put to them. To one man who was 
nervous from the severity of his examination Commissioner Roose- 
velt said: 

"You are the man Father So-and-so spoke to me about?" "Yes, 
sir; but I didn't suppose being a Catholic made any difference." ''Of 
course not." was the instant reply. 'T don't care whether you are a 
Catholic, a Protestant, or a Jew, or a Gentile. I think you'll do. 
Tell Father So-and-so if he has any more men like you to send them, 
down here. I pass you; go and see the other commissioners." 

That policeman never took blackmail. There were hundreds like 
him, -This for having a good man at the head of police affairs. 

And now take a personal illustration to show what a bad man at 
the head may do. Says an observer: "I was coming to Xew York 
on the Day Express. I got into conversation with a man who said 
that he was the chief of police in one of the large cities in the state 

of . He showed me his shield to prove his statement. He 

had taken just enough liquor to be talkative. He said: 'I had no 
idea of coming East till last night, but I made a touch and I thought 
I would blow it in. You see it was this way: I got a telephone mes- 
sage from the railroad station that three of the biggest crooks in the 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



147 



country were down there prepared to take a train. I jumped on a car 
and hurried down.' ''What you doing here?" I asked. 'Nothin'/ 
they said. 'We ain't done nothin' here and we ain't goin' to. We 
are just passin' through.' "I knew they hadn't done anything in 
town, and so I said, 'How much money have you got?' "Only a 
Httle," they said. "Come, that won't do," I repHed. "Shell out, or 
up you go." 

"I could easily have fixed 'em; put up a job on 'em or sent 'em up 
as suspicious characters, and so they had to give up. They had 
fifteen hundred dollars. I took twelve hundred, run 'em out of 
town, and now I'm going to have a good time." "I haven't the 
slightest doubt he told the truth. I saw his money. He was the 
nephew of one of the best known men in one of our Eastern cities, a 
man whom I knew well, and he was going East to visit his uncle. 
Comment on the character of the police force under such a man is 
unnecessary." 

Certain of the difficulties which Mr. Roosevelt had to face were 
merely those which confronted the entire reform administration in 
its management of the municipality. Many people expected that this 
reform administration would work an absolute revolution in the 
government and even the minds of the entire population of the city, 
and felt that they had been almost cheated because there was not an 
immediate cleansing of every form of bad influence in New York. 
The Board of Commissioners were obliged to treat all questions that 
arose strictly on their merit, without reference to the desires of the 
politicians. The Commissioners went into this mode of procedure 
with their eyes open; they knew the trouble their course of action 
would cause them personally, and, what was more important, the way 
their ef¥orts for reform would be hampered. But there was no 
alternative, and they had to abide by the result. Yet they could not 
accomplish all they would have liked to do for they were shackled 



148 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



by ridiculous legislation and by the opposition and intrigues of the 
most base machine politicians. Nevertheless, the net result of their 
work was that they did more to increase the efficiency of the police 
department, and establish its honesty, than had ever previously been 
done in its history. 

The Tammany officials made a systematic effort to excite public 
hostility against the police for their warfare on vice. The law- 
breaking liquor seller, the keeper of disorderly houses and the 
gambler had been influential friends of Tammany and principal con- 
tributors to many of its campaign exchequers. Naturally Tammany 
fought for them, and the best and most picturesque way to carry 
on such a fight was to paint with gross exaggeration and false state- 
ment the methods necessarily employed by ever}' honest police force 
to do its work. Tammany found its best allies in the sensational 
papers. 

"Scandal forms the breath of the nostrils of such papers, and they 
are quite as ready to create as to describe it. To sustain law and 
order is humdrum and does not readily lend itself to flaunting wood 
cuts; but if the editor will stoop, and make his subordinates stoop, 
to raking the gutters of human depravity, to upholding the wrong- 
doer, and furiously assailing what is upright and honest, he can make 
money just as other types of panders make it. The man who is to 
do any honest work in any form of civic politics must make up his 
mind (and if he is a man of properly robust character he will make 
it up without difficulty) to treat the assaults of papers like these with 
absolute indifference, and to go his way unheeding. Indeed, he will 
have to make up his mind to be criticised, sometimes justly, and more 
often unjustly, even by decent people; and he must not be so thin 
skinned as to mind such criticism overmuch." 

Mr. Roosevelt underwent this newspaper criticism. He was at- 
tacked by certain sheets and most unfairly written up. \\'hen a 



MRS. R00vSK\'KI.T AND BABY OUKNTIN 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



151 



particular raid was made on some miserable resort of high play, and 
the like, the papers next day came out with glaring headlines about 
the injustice of the thing, more than once saying that the very same 
thing obtained in the high-class clubs frequented by the Commis- 
sioner and his friends, but that the arm of the law was supposedly 
not long enough to reach men with six figures to their bank accounts 
and who ruled the city arrogantly and with pure bombast. They 
promised to prove that he showed favoritism; that he left alone those 
places of a fine tone and selected others where the language might 
not be quite so elegant but where the same games were played. As 
for drink, they said, why not attack these same exclusive clubs where 
every night the members drank in public, in the full sight of the 
police, and were afterward driven to their homes in a beastly state 
of intoxication, their coachmen carrying them to and from the ele- 
gant private carriages which belonged to the friends of the saint-Hke 
Commissioner. Other vices were hinted at as having a friend in the 
Commissioner, when those of his acquaintances, as he knew very 
well, were concerned in them, but which he with hypocritic virtue 
assailed and put down where the repression made a show to the 
public and made him a seeming reformer. The cry was that vice in 
high places might exist, but that when the social line was drawn it 
must go along with the ''family liquor store" and small "stock offices" 
where occasional bets were made on a favorite horse. If he ever read 
these criticisms of himself Mr. Roosevelt gave no sign. He went on 
his way unabashed and uncaring, gaining every day the esteem of 
the right people who were now roused to the needs of a city that had 
too long rested silently under a wretched system of police, and where 
sin and shame stalked through the highways insolently and arro- 
gantly, and where in whose public offices were men in authority who 
upheld the disgraces of Gotham for what they netted their pockets. 
Mr. Roosevelt was going through a siege of opposition as well as 



152 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



approval, though the opposition was closer at hand, being in the very 
places where he w^as most in touch and where he should of right have 
looked for aid in his crusade against corruption in the department 
of police. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



Tidal W'avc of Reform — Blackmailing Tariff — Detectives — Methods of Restoring 
Order — Rewards and Punishments — Police and Citizens — Sunday Liquor 

Law — Saloonkeepers and Politicians — Report of Interview — 'Wealth from 
Cotruption — Sunday Law Enforced — Increase of Police Force — Examinations — 

Best Policemen — Honest Elections — Premiums for Merit — Tramp Lodging- 
houses — Bertillon System — Good Results of Reform. 

r I ^ HE year before Mr. Roosevelt assumed the ofifice of President 



of the PoHce Board of New York, Tammany Hall had been 



overthrown by a coalition composed partly of the regular 
Republicans, partly of anti-Tammany Democrats, and partly of In- 
dependents. The tidal wave which at the time (1894) was running 
against the Democratic party influenced the victory against Tam- 
many, but most of all in producing the result was the almost universal 
disgust of decent citizens for the rank corruption which under Tam- 
many's sway had honeycombed every department of the city govern- 
ment, and more especially the police force. 

No man not intimately acquainted with both the lower and 
humbler sides of New York life (and there is a wide distinction be- 
tween the two) can fully realize how far the corruption in the police 
force went. Except in the few instances where prominent politicians 
make demands, which could not be refused, towards the end of Tam- 
many rule in the department, both promotions and appointments 
were made for money. There was a regular tariff of charges ranging 
from two or three hundred dollars for appointment as patrolman, to 
twelve or fifteen thousand for the office of captain. The money was 
reimbursed to those who paid by a system of blackmail which was 
mainly carried on at the expense of gamblers, liquor-sellers and 
keepers of disorderly houses, though every form of vice and crime 




153 



154 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



contributed its quota; and many entirely respectable people who were 
ignorant or timid were blackmailed under a pretense that in carrying 
on their various decent vocations they were violating obscure ordi- 
nances, and the like. 

When Mr. Roosevelt took office things were at a miserable pass. 
The regular Democratic organization, not only in the city but in 
the State, w^as under the dominion of Tammany and its allies, and 
they fought the Commissioners at every step. Tammany officials 
still left in power did all they could to balk the reform movement. 
Besides suffering from the difficulties which beset the course of the 
entire administration, the Police Board had to meet with certain 
special difficulties. Says Mr. Roosevelt: 'Tt is not a pleasant thing 
to deal with criminals and purveyors of vice. It is very rough work 
and it cannot always be done in a nice manner. The man with the 
night-stick, the man in the blue coat with the helmet, can keep and 
repress open violence on the streets; but most kinds of crime and 
vice are ordinarily carried on furtively and by stealth, perhaps at 
night, perhaps behind closed doors. It is possible to reach them only 
by the employment of the man in plain clothes — the detective. Now, 
the function of the detective is primarily that of the spy, and it is 
always easy to rouse feeling against a spy. It is absolutely necessary 
to employ him. Ninety per cent, of the most dangerous criminals 
and purveyors of vice cannot be reached in any other way. But the 
average citizen who does not think deeply fails to realize the necessity 
for any such employment. In a vague way he desires vice and crime 
put down; but also in a vague way he objects to the only possible 
means by which they can be put down. It is easy to mislead him into 
denouncing what is necessarily done in order to carry out the very 
policy for which he is clamoring." 

Mr. Roosevelt and his colleagues an the Board employed detec- 
tives to ferret out vice which could not be openly reached by the 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



155 



police, and at once the opposing politicians raved about "underhand 
methods," and even the good citizens said there might be "more 
honorable means of getting at the trouble." But it was the only 
way, for the vices which it was determined to suppress had friends 
which guarded them and who were astute and strong to resist open- 
handed ways; so the less beautiful methods had to be resorted to. 
The papers took it up, and there was often a pretty hue and cry about 
persecution and the like. The Commissioners had to deafen them- 
selves against all this, and go ahead, resolving that they were doing 
their best for the public, as the public would in time discover. 

Mr. Roosevelt, in speaking of his duties, rr^odestly says that there 
was no need of genius in administering the police force. What was 
needed was the exercise of plain ordinary virtues of a commonplace 
type, which all good citizens are expected to possess. Common 
sense, honesty, courage, energy, resolution, readiness to learn, and 
a desire to be pleasant with every one, were the qualities most called 
for. The Commissioners found that, in spite of all that was said and 
done, in spite of widespread corruption and malfeasance in the police 
department, the bulk of the men wished to be honest, and were 
honest at heart. Of course, there were some who were past being 
cured of dishonesty, which had been practiced so long that it had 
eaten into the bone; but there were also some who had remained 
honest and upright in spite of temptation and terrible pressure. The 
m)ajority came between the two extremes. Although not possessing 
the peculiar strength to fight against corruption when victory was 
nearly hopeless, they were nevertheless glad to be decent, and wel- 
comed a change of system under which they were rewarded for well- 
doing and punished for doing wrong. 

Says Mr. Roosevelt: "Our methods for restoring order and disci- 
pline were simple, and indeed so were our methods for securing 
efficiency. We made frequent personal inspections, especially at 



i56 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



night, turning up anywhere, at any time. A\'e thus speedily got arl 
idea of whom among our upper subordinates we could trust, and 
whom we could not. We then proceeded to punish those guilty of 
shortcomings, and to reward those who did well, refusing to pay any 
heed whatever in either case to anything except the man's own 
character and record. A vtry few of these promotions and dismnssals 
sufficed to show our subordinates that at last they were dealing 
vdth superiors who meant what they said, and that the days of politi- 
cal 'puir were over, while we were in power. The effect was im- 
mediate. The decent men took heart, and those who were not decent 
feared longer to offend. The morale of the entire force improved 
steadily." 

But something must be done in regard to the relations between 
the police and citizens generally. There had been a great deal of 
complaint of the brutal treatment of innocent people at the hands 
of the police. This was now stopped by the simple expedient of 
dismissing from the force the first two or three men found guilty of 
brutality. On the other hand, the force was made to understand 
that when an emergency arose necessitating the use of their weapons 
against a mob or an individual criminal, the Board without reserva- 
tion would be with the police. ''Our sympathy was for the friends, 
and not the foes, of order. If a mob threatened violence we were 
glad to have the mob hurt. If a criminal showed fight we expected 
the officer to use any weapon that was necessary to overcame him 
on the instant; and even, if necessaiy, to take his life. All that the 
Board required was to be convinced that the necessity really existed. 
We did not possess a particle of that maudlin sympathy for the 
criminal, disorderly and lawless classes which is such a particularly 
unhealthy sign of social development: and we were bound that the 
improvement in the fighting efticiency of the police should go hand 
in hand with the improvement in their moral tone." 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 167 

Mr. Roosevelt had none of the mawkishness which pities the evil- 
doer who has his way and then rebels at punishment. The law, ex- 
cusing no man for ignorance of it, once broken must be vindicated. 
The lax sympathy of the unreasoning — that sees in every criminal an 
erring brother or sister who should be taken to the heart and com- 
forted and consoled — did not enter into his plan of action. The man 
or woman who does wrong must take the penalty, just as one who 
indulges in frenzy-producing drugs must be made insane. Sin might 
be a disease, but there was a medicine for it ; and while many a one- 
time criminal afterwards becomes a good, law-abiding citizen, yet at 
the time of his transgression he must be taught that he has gone 
against the law of the land and the rights of evei*y citizen, himself 
included. 

To break up the system of blackmail and corruption was not so 
easy. It was less difficult to protect decent people in their rights of 
immunity from the attacks of the lawless belligerents, and this was 
brought about at once. But the criminal who is blackmailed had a 
direct interest in paying the blackmailer, and it was not at all easy for 
the board to get correct information regarding it. But they put a 
stop to most of the blackmailing by the simple mode of a rigorous 
enforcement of the laws, not only against crime, but also against vice. 
It was the enforcement of the liquor law which brought an earth- 
quake about the heads of the Commissioners. 

'The larger part of New York City wished to drink liquor on 
Sunday. Any man who studies the social condition of the poor 
knows that liquor works more ruin than any other one cause. He 
knows also, however, that it is simply impracticable to extirpate the 
habit entirely, and that to attempt too much often merely results in 
accompHshing too little; and he knows, moreover, that for a man 
alone to drink whisky in a bar room is one thing, and for men and 
their families to drink light wines or beer in respectable restaurants 



158 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



is quite a different thing. The average citizen, who does not think 
at all, and the average politician of the baser sort, who only thinks 
about his own personal advantage, find it easiest to disregard these 
facts and to pass a liquor law which vrill please the temperance people, 
and then trust to the police department to enforce it with such laxity 
as to please the intemperate." 

The results of this system were evident on all sides when the Board 
came into power. \Yrs the Sunday liquor law -in New York a dead 
letter? Xo less than eight thousand arrests for its violation had been 
made the year before ]\Ir. Roosevelt and his fellow commissioners 
came into power. It was certainly alive, while it was proceeded 
against only in cases where the violators of it had no political pull 
or refused to pay money. The liquor business stands alone among 
the businesses of the world. It has a tendency to produce criminality 
in the community at large and law breaking among the saloon- 
keepers and bartenders themselves. Supervision must be rigidly kept 
over this form of mercantile activity, and restrictions imposed upon 
the traffic. Up to the present the traffic has gone on and apparently 
cannot be stopped in large cities, though the evils can be minimized. 

'Tn New York the saloon keepers have always stood high among 
professional poHticians. Nearly two-thirds of the political leaders of 
Tammany Hall have at one time or another been in the liquor busi- 
ness. The saloon is the natural club and meeting place for the ward 
heelers and leaders, and the bar room politician is one of the most 
common and best recognized factors in local political government. 
The saloon keepers are always hand-in-glove with the professional 
politicians and occupy toward them a position such as is not held by 
any other class of men. The influence they wield in local politics 
has always been very great, and until our board took office no man 
ever dared seriously to threaten them for their flagrant violations of 
the law. The pOAverful and influential saloonkeeper was glad to see 




NIGHT INSPECTION— POLICE COMMISSIONER ROOSEVELT AND 
JACOB RIIS HUNTING OUT DELINQUENT PATROLMEN 
IN NEW YORK CITY 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



161 



his neighbors closed, for it gave him business. On the other hand, a 
corrupt pohce captain, or the corrupt politician who controlled him, 
could always extort money from a saloonkeeper by threatening to 
close him and let his neighbor remain open. Gradually the greed 
of corrupt police officials and of corrupt politicians grew by what 
it fed on, until they began to blackmail all but the very most in- 
fluential liquor sellers; and as liquor sellers were very numerous, and 
the profits of the liquor business great, the amount collected was 
enormous." 

It w^as said that more than one police captain in New York waxed 
wealthy from this very source of income, and that many a row of 
houses on the outskirts or a huge flat for the accommodation of many 
families could be pointed out as the spoils of a man who had played 
his game with energy and used the money nefariously taken in as a 
blackmailer of saloon keepers to invest in brick and mortar. The best 
class of saloon keepers found this system of blackmail and political 
favoritism intolerable. The law which the commissioners found on 
the statute books had been promulgated by a Tammany Legislature 
three years before. A couple of months after the Commission settled 
down to work, J. P. Smith, editor of the Wine and Spirit Gazette, the 
liquor dealers' organ, gave out the following interview, which is of 
such a remarkable nature that it has not been curtailed in quoting: 

Governor Flower, as well as the Legislature of 1892, was elected 
upon distinct pledges that relief would be given by the Democratic 
party to the liquor dealers, especially of the cities of the State. In 
accordance with this promise a Sunday-opening clause was inserted 
in the excise bill of 1892. Governor Flower then said that he could 
not approve the Sunday-opening clause; whereupon the Liquor 
Dealers' Association, which had charge of the bill, struck the Sunday- 
opening clause out. After Governor Hill had been elected for the 
second time I had several interviews with him on that very subject. 



162 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT 



He told me, 'You knoAV I am the friend of the hquor dealers and will 
go to almost any length to help them and give them relief; but do 
not ask me to recommiend to the Legislature the passage of the law 
opening the saloons on Sunday. I cannot do it, for it will ruin the 
Demo<::ratic party in the State." He gave the same interview to 
various members of the State Liquor Dealers' Association vvho 
waited upon him for the purpose of getting relief from the blackmail 
of the police, stating that the lack of having the Sunday question 
properly regulated was at the bottom of the trouble. Blackmail had 
been brought to such a state of perfection and had become so oppres- 
sive to the liquor dealers themselves that they communicated first 
with Governor Hill and then with ]\Ir. Croker. The Wine and Spirit 
Gazette had taken up the subject because of gross discrimination made 
by the police in the enforcement of the Sunday-closing law. The 
paper again and again called upon the police commnssioners to either 
uniformly enforce the law or uniformly disregard it. A committee 
of the Central Association of Liquor Dealers of this city then took 
up the matter and called upon Police Commissioner Martin (Mr. 
Roosevelt's predecessor in the Presidency of the Police Board). An 
agreement was then made between the leaders of Tammany Hall and 
the liquor dealers, according to which the monthly blackmail paid 
to the police was to be discontinued in return for political support. 
In other words, the retail dealers should bind themselves to solidly 
support the Tammiany ticket in consideration of the discontinuance 
of the monthly blackmail by the police. This agreement was carried 
out. Now what was the consequence. If the liquor dealer after the 
monthly blackmail ceased showed any signs of independence the 
Tammany Hall district leader would give the tip to the police captain, 
and that man would be pulled and arrested the following Sunday. 

Then Air. Smith, after inveighing against the law went on: The 
(present) police commissioners are honestly endeavoring to have the 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



163 



law carried out. They are no respecters of persons, and our infor- 
mation from all classes of liquor dealers is that the rich and the poor, 
the influential and the uninfluential, are required equally to obey the 
law. If there is any comment to be made upon the statements of this 
interview let it be briefly said that the statements were never denied. 

The law w^as a not unimportant factor in the Tammany scheme of 
rule. Tammany officials, police captains and patrolmen blackmailed 
the liquor men who had no pull and made them virtually the slaves 
of the ring. On the other hand, very wealthy and influential dealers 
in liquor controlled the police and made or unmade captains, ser- 
geants and patrolmen at their pleasure. The more powerful dealer 
in Hquor might violate the law if he wished, unless he fell under the 
displeasure of the ward boss or the police, in which event he was not 
permitted to infringe upon the law in the least. Therefore, the new 
police board had one of two courses to follow. They could either let 
it be understood by the police that all saloon keepers might become 
law-breakers, or they could instruct them that there should be no 
law breaking at all. They followed the latter course. For two or 
three months it would seem there was to be a continual fight, and on 
Sundays Mr. Roosevelt had to call on half the force to carry out the 
provisions of the liquor law; for Tammany had drawn up the law so 
as to m^ake it easy of enforcement for blackmailing purposes, but 
difficult of enforcement generally, certain provisions being inserted 
with the intention to make it difncult of general execution. But when 
the liquor dealers understood that the new men at the head of affairs 
did not intend to be bullied in the slightest degree, nor to be threat- 
ened or coaxed out of icllovring a course which the law of their 
ofxice made imiperative on them as honorable men, resistance practi- 
islands from which it is possible to comimand our shores and to pro- 
tect our commerce on the high seas." 



164 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



Tame submission to foreign aggression of any sort is mean and 
unworthy; but it is even meaner and more unworthy still to first 
bluster and then submit, or else refuse to make the preparations which 
alone can obviate the necessity for submission. In public as in pri- 
vate life a bold front makes to insure peace and not strife. If we 
do not possess a formidable Navy war may be forced upon us at any 
time. 

But we do not need a Navy merely for defense. Of course, our 
chief harbors should be fortified and put in a condition to resist 
attacks of an enemy's fleet, and one of our first needs is a good 
force of torpedo boats to use primarily for coast defense. We 
cannot rely on coast protection alone. Forts, heavy land guns 
and torpedo boats are indispensable, but in the state of naval 
and military knowledge to-day we must rely mainly, as all 
great nations always have relied, on the battleship — the fight- 
ing ship of the line. If our battleships can destroy a hostile fleet, 
our coasts are safe from the menace of serious attack. If v/e 
have no fleet to meet the enemy's on the high sea, or to anticipate 
his stroke by our ow'n, then every city within reach from the sea 
must spend men and money preparing for an attack that may not 
come, but once attempted would cause an irredeemable disaster. 

"Still more is it necessary to have a fleet of great battleships if we 
intend to live up to the Monroe Doctrine, and to insist upon its 
cally came to an end. In the year after the commissioners first took 
office the number of arrests for the violation of the Sunday liquor 
law fell to one-half of what they had been during the last year under 
Tammany rule, wdiile the saloons were practically closed, whereas 
under Tammany most of them had kept open. And yet no new 
method was adopted by the new men, unless honesty was a new 
method, nor was the law enforced with unusual severity. It was 
merely enforced against the man with a pull exactly as it was against 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



165 



the man who had no pull at all. There was no discrimination, and 
that was something new in the annals of the liquor trade, and the 
politicians of the lower kind and liquor dealers of the same sort 
attacked the commission with the utmost virulency. But the com- 
missioners went on their way satisfied with having given a much 
needed and wholesome lesson to the city that a law should not be 
put upon a statute book if it was not meant for enforcement, and 
that even a usually effete excise law might be put into practical execu- 
tion if the officials having it in charge so desired. 

The wealthy brewers and plutocratic liquor sellers who had swelled 
their bank accounts by violating the statute with the open connivance 
of the police showed their teeth, and conscienceless politicians sup- 
ported them and yelled for assistance at this extraordinary state of 
affairs. But the poor man, and more especially the poor man's wife 
and children were benefited, and they did not accuse Mr. Roosevelt 
of playing at the galleries as did some of the newspapers and political 
officials. The surgeons of the hospitals found their ]\Ionday work 
lessened to one-half, for brawls of drunken men lessened and there 
were fewer cracked heads than in years. The magistrates who sat in 
the city courts on the day after Sunday to try the offenders of the pre- 
ceding day had much less to do than usual, while many a tenement 
liouse emptied its families into the country for the Day of Rest be- 
cause the head of the family could not spend his money at the grog- 
geries. Obedience to law is the important element of good citizen- 
ship, and this obedience was being enforced by the commissioners, 
of whom Mr. Roosevelt was the head. 

There was no species of untruth to which the opponents of the 
commission did not resort in order to try to break them down in this 
purpose of enforcing the Sunday law. For several weeks they in- 
sisted that the saloons were as wide-open as ever, but they gradually 
quieted down when the counsel for the Liquor Dealers' Association 



166 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



admitted in open court at the time when the commission secured the 
com'iction of thirt}- of his cHents, that over nine-tenths of the Hquor 
dealers had becomx bankrupt since the commission had stopped the 
illegal trade which afforded the taverns the larger portion of their 
revenue. They then began to say that the Commission in devoting 
its attention to enforcing the liquor law had allowed crime to in- 
crease. For some time the cry had some influence. But as this was 
not true, it went down with the other mendacities of the world. 

If a commentary be necessary upon its accuracy or inaccuracy it 
was furnished toward the end of the administration of the Commis- 
sioners, for in February, 1897, the Judge in addressing the grand 
jury congratulated that body upon the fact that there was at that 
timic less crime in New York relatively to the population than ever 
before. 

In reorganizing the police force ''the Board had to make and did 
m^ake more appointments and more dismissals than had ever before 
been made in the same length of time. V\^e were so hampered by the 
law that we were not able to dismiss many of the men whom we 
should have dismissed, but Ave did turn out two hundred men — more 
than four times as many as had ever been turned out in the sam^e 
length of time before; all of them being dismissed after formal trial, 
and after having been given full opportunity to be heard in their own 
defense. We appointed about seventeen hundred men all told — 
again four times as many as ever before; for we were allowed a large 
increase of the police force by law. We made a hundred and thirty 
promotions; more than had been made in the six preceding years. 

All this work was done in strict accord with Avhat has grown to be 
known as the principles of civil service reform. In dismissing men 
from the force attention was paid only to the man's efficiency and 
his past record, no attention being paid to outside pressure. Under 
the old rule no policeman possessing sufficient influence was ever 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



167 



dismissed, no matter how much he might offend. The same in 
making promotions; the Commission took into account not alone the 
man's general record, his faithfulness, industry and vigilance, but also 
his personal prowess as shown in any special feat of daring, in arrest- 
ing of criminals or in the saving of life. Again, in making appoint- 
ments the Commission saw that it was practicable to employ a system 
of com.petitive examination of a most rigid character, which combined 
a severe physical examination with, also, an examination of mental 
qualities such as could be passed by a man who had attended a pub- 
lic school. "Of course there was also a rigid investigation of char- 
acter. Theorists have often sneered at civil service reform as 'imprac- 
ticable,' and I am very far from asserting that written competitive 
examinations are always applicable, or that they may not sometimes 
be merely stop-gaps, used only because they are better than the 
methods of appointing through pohtical endorsement; but most 
certainly the system worked admirably in the Police Department. 
We got the best lot of recruits for patrolmen that had ever been ob- 
tained in the history of the force, and we did just as well in our ex- 
aminations for matrons and police surgeons. The uplifting of the 
force was very noticeable, both physically and mentally. The best 
men were those who had served for three years or so in the Army or 
Navy. Next to these came the railroad men. One noticeable feature 
of the work was that we greatly raised the proportion of native born, 
until of the last hundred appointed ninety-four per cent, were 
Americans by birth. Not once in a hundred times did we know the 
poHtics of the appointee, and we paid as little heed to this as to their 
religion." 

An important task of the Commission was ascertaining if the elec- 
tions were carried on honestly. Under the Tammany regime the 
cheating was of the most flagrant nature, the police being often 
openly used to facilitate fraudulent practices at the polls. This was 



168 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



brought about partly from the character of the men used as election 
officers. By having a written examination of such election officers 
and by a careful examination regarding their characters, the Com- 
mission certainly raised their calibre. Before each election the Com- 
missioners were obliged to reject for moral or mental shortcomings 
over a thousand of the men whom the regular party organizations, 
exercising their legal rights, proposed as election officers. The 
Commissioners then made the police understand that their only duty 
was to guarantee an honest election, and that they might expect the 
severest punishment if they presumed to interfere with an honest 
citizen on the one hand, or failed to stop fraud or violence on the 
other. In a number of other ways did the Commission under Mr. 
Roosevelt endeavor to effect reform in the police force, less important 
in the eyes of the public, but still important. Especially was heed 
taken to put a premium on meritorious conduct by awarding medals 
and certificates of honorable mention where promotion could not be 
had. A system of pistol practice was introduced by which, for the 
first time, the policemen were brought to a reasonable standard of 
excellence in handling their revolvers. A bicycle squad was organ- 
ized, the members of which distinguished themselves not only to duty 
but by exhibitions of remarkable daring and skill. 

Another piece of reform was the abolishing of the tramp lodging- 
houses which had in the first place been started in the police stations 
in a spirit of sympathetic but not over-wise philanthropy. These 
tramp lodging houses not enjoying proper supervision had become 
in time mere nurseries for crime and chronic pauperism, tramps and 
loafers of every degree of worthlessness thronging to the city in the 
cooler weather when the open country was no longer pleasant, and 
taking up their quarters in the lodging houses provided for them. 
The Commission put them out of existence, a municipal lodging 
house being substituted. In this municipal house all homeless 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



171 



wanderers and unfortunates were received. They were made to 
bathe and were given night-clothes before going to bed. The next 
morning they were set to work and were so closely supervised that 
the habitual tramp and vagrant was speedily detected and appre- 
hended, and in time as many as could do so gave the house a wide 
berth. 

The Bertillion system of measurement for the identihcation of 
criminals was also introduced and did much work that had hitherto 
been relegated to the memory of the detectives when a wrong-doer 
was apprehended and there vvas a doubt as to his identit}^ as a former 
criminal. In a short time there was a striking increase in the 
honesty and efficiency of the police force. 

"When we took office it is not too much to say that the great 
majority of the citizens of New York were firmly convinced that nO' 
poHce force could be both honest and efficient. They felt it to be a 
part of the necessary order of things that a policeman should be 
corrupt, and they were convinced that the most efficient way of war- 
ring against certain forms of crime' — notably crimes against person 
and property — was by enlisting the services of other criminals, and 
of purveyors of vice generally, giving them immunity in return for 
their aid. Before we took power the ordinary purveyor of vice was 
allowed to ply his or her trade unmolested, partly in consideration of 
paying blackmail to the police, partly in consideration of giving in- 
formation about any criminal who belonged to the unprotected 
classes. We at once broke up this whole business of blackmail and 
protection and made war upon all criminals alike, instead of getting 
the assistance of half in warring on the other half. Nevertheless, so 
great was the improvement in the spirit of the force that although 
deprived of their former vicious allies they actually did better work 
than they ever did before against those criminals who threatened life 
and property. Relatively to the population fewer crimes of violence 



172 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



occurred during our administration of the Board than in any pre- 
vious two years of the city's history in recent times; and the total 
number of criminal arrests increased, while the number of cases in 
which no arrest follovred the commission of crime decreased. The 
detective bureau nearly doubled the number of arrests made com- 
pared with the year before we took office; obtaining, moreover, 365 
convictions of felons and 215 convictions for misdemeanors, as against 
269 and 105 respectively for the previous year. At the same time 
every attempt at riot or disorder was sum.marily checked, and all 
gangs of violent criminals brought into immediate subjection; while 
on the other hand the immense mass meetings and political parades 
were handled with such care that not a single case of clubbing of any 
innocent citizen was reported." 

j\Ir. Roosevelt had reason to be proud of this record of his com- 
mission. The result of the labors of the Commissioners was of signal 
value to the city, for the citizens had better protection than they had 
ever had before, and at the same time corruption which had been a 
canker in civic aftairs was cured. The Commission conclusively 
showed that it was possible to combine both honesty and efficiency 
in handling the immense police force. The attacks leveled at the 
Commissioners was not because of their shortcomings, but because 
of what they did that was good, and as the attacks came from base 
sources they rebounded from those they were intended to hurt. The 
commission enforced the laws as they were on the statute books, it 
broke up blackm.ail, it kept down the spirit of disorder and repressed 
rascalit}^ and it administered the police force with an eye that was 
alone for the welfare of the city. 

Mr. Roosevelt had the faculty for organization and he had proved 
its merit in his Presidency of the Police Board. When he took the 
position he found the greatest disorder and maladministration; when 
he left it he left behind him a force of military men in blue coats who 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



173 



for precision and excellence of deportment were worthy of the 
greatest praise, while their honesty could not be impugned, and who 
in their habits and behaviour would seem to vouch for the fact that 
the good government of the city was their one aim and object. They 
were respected by all respectable citizens, and they went about their 
arduous duties with the pleasing reflection that they were men above 
reproach and able to look all other men in the face without blenching. 
They vvcre free to say that o^ne man had effected this reform in their 
ranks — before he came they were expected to be mere tools in the 
hands of unscrupulous men, to do the miserable behests of the viola- 
tors of law and order, and to view crime and criminals not as blots 
upon the city's fair name, but more as mines from which might be 
extracted gold with which to line the coffers of officials whose praise 
or blam.e kept them in office or dismissed them — the keeping and the 
dismissal for no excellence or wrong of their own, but for the much 
or little gain which their connivance with wrong-doing yielded their 
faulty chiefs. The one man who had wrought most of the change was 
Theodore Roosevelt. 




CHAPTER IX. 



Assistant Secretary of Navy — Foresees Spanish War — Personnel Bill in Navy — 
I'ushing Repairs of Ships — $800,000 and $500,000 for Powder and Shot — 

Stcry of Old-time Buffalo Hunting — Washington's Maxim — Address Be- 
fore Naval War College — War of 1812 Recalled — Need of a Reconstructed 

Navy — Necessary to Proceed at Once — Stirring Peroration — War Actually 
Declared — Resignation from Naval Department — "Roosevelt's Rough Riders" 

Organized. 

ROM the presidency of the New York Police Board Mr. 



Roosevelt was called by President McKinley to be Assistant 



Secretary of the Navy in April, 1897. His energy and force 
were now to make him prominent in the Navy Department, for he 
showed himself to be a model of an executive and administrative 
officer, and, what is more, he had an instinct which singled out the 
best men in the service; and when he had found them he trusted 
them implicitly and thus gave to the country the full value of their 
efficiency. Of his service in the Department it is scarcely necessary 
to speak at length. He was virtually at the head for a time. Pie 
foresaw the Spanish war a year before it came; collected ammunition; 
insisted on the practice of marksmanship by all the vessels, and made 
the Navy ready for any emergency. 

Said the late Cushman K. Davis, head of the Senate Committee on 
Foreign Relations: "If it had not been for Roosevelt, Dewey would 
not have been able to strike the blow that he dealt at Manila. Roose- 
velt's sagacity, energy and promptness saved us." 

But he never desired to pose as the man who made the Navy ready 
for the war, or to try to deprive his superior. Secretary Long, of all 
the honors due to his most excellent management of the Navy. The 
Navy was prepared for war, and the Assistant Secretary had no small 




175 



176 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



share in the preparation. He helped to pass the personnel bill, which 
did away with the standing cause of bitterness between the Hne and 
staff. ''It is useless," he said, "to spend millions of dollars in the 
building of perfect fighting machines, unless we make the personnel 
which is to handle these machines equally perfect." From the very 
first he said he saw the possibility of a conflict with Spain. He pushed 
repairs on the ships, and visited the various naval reserves through- 
out the country, inspecting and making rigid inquiries. He left 
nothing undone that would, in his opinion, secure the highest effi- 
ciency in the service when the time for action came. It is asserted 
that it was he who first realized the tremendous importance of the 
opportunity for us if the war should open the East, and who had 
Dewey, in whom he recognized the right man for the place, ap- 
pointed to command the Eastern Squadron. Many naval experts 
agree that the wonderful marksmanship by the American gunners 
was due to his foresight. 

A characteristic story is told regarding Mr. Roosevelt's insistence 
on practice in the Navy. Shortly after his appointment he asked for 
an appropriation of $3oo,ooo for ammunition. The appropriation 
was made. A few months later he asked for another appropriation of 
$5CO,cco for the same purpose. When asked what had become of 
the first appropriation, he replied: "Every cent of it has been spent 
for powder and shot, and every bit of powder and shot has been 
fired." When he was asked what he would do with the additional 
$500,000 replied: "Use every dollar of that, too, within the next 
thirty days in practice shooting." 

Rumors from Spain were disquieting; the American people waited. 
When the Maine was blov/n up, and so many thought that diplomacy 
might settle the matter, Mr. Roosevelt, it is said, had no doubt that 
war would follow, and his energies were bent with redoubled force 
to getting the Navy in readiness. When war finally broke out he is 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



177 



credited with a plan for taking Havana at once, and dictating terms 
from there. War is never pleasant; it could not be desired by even 
a man so energetic as Mr. Roosevelt in insisting upon the country 
having its rights, as he had heretofore insisted upon State, and city, 
and citizen having their rights. He had married again; a little family 
was growing up around him, and home and books must now have 
had many new attractions for him. His hunting pleasures, too, were 
something, and he had earned a rest after his work on the Police 
Board in New York. But he must forego much — home life must be 
put in the background; books left unopened, and the happy existence 
on the plains go out of his mind. It may not be out of place here to 
insert the experience of a man who, at the beginning of the war, and 
afterv/ard when the then Assistant Secretary had assumed the highest 
office of the land, told the story. He thus speaks of his meeting 
with, and life near, Mr. Roosevelt years before: 

"It was along in the fall of '83 that I first saw him as he stepped 
from the train one evening in the little shack town of Little Missouri, 
a point where the Northern Pacific Railroad crosses the river of that 
name in the heart of the North Dakota Bad Lands. A slender, blue- 
eyed young fellow of about 26, with little baggage, save a superb 
collection of rifles in perfect order. If you raked the continent with 
a fine-toothed comb you could have found no tougher aggregation 
of great Amicrican citizens unhung than the gang who, lounging in 
front of 'Big Mouth Bob's' canvas saloon across the way, eyed the 
stranger with lazy indifference. In their ripe estimation he was only 
one of those predatory 'dude' hunters, who, after a frightened ex- 
istence of a day or two, 'pulled their freight' again for home in pro- 
found thankfulness. The station agent was, as usual, roaring drunk. 
The stranger managed, however, to secure information that led to 
his hiring a guide named Sylvane Ferris, who owned a bunch of 
saddle ponies grazing on the river bottom near by. These were 



178 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



brought up and picketed to the sage-brush, while the stranger and 
his kit spent the night in a nearby dugout, preferring this to the 
vociferous joys of the 'Blue Goose".' Next morning the outfit started 
for the buffao range. The stranger who said he was from New York 
and his name, Theodore Roosevelt (although it might have been 
Nebuchadnezzar, for all it signified there), led his string of pack 
ponies behind those of the guide, as they plunged into that awful 
trackless waste of the Bad Lands. Well-named indeed is that 
mysterious land: piled higher and higher were great precipitous 
peaks, their scarred and blistered faces streaked with scoria and lava. 
Sheer down at their feet lay yaAMiing chasms from out of the bottom- 
less depths of which rose sulphurous smoke from subterranean fires 
that knew no end. Winding its treacherous way, the faint pony trail 
led along the faces of the giant buttes, where a single misstep meant 
death. Occasionally the trail crossed the swift, silent, tortuous river, 
that wound its quicksandy course through this, the darkest, strangest, 
loneliest land that human foot has ever trod. 

''Thirty miles to the south, the buffalo herd was struck, and the 
guide, whose respect for his employer grew with each mile of the 
trail, looked on with wonder. Here was a new breed of 'critter,' a 
man who, while he kept his face and blankets clean, rode straight, 
shot straight, and took his medicine like a veteran. Hunger, cold, 
exposure were lost on him. With a grim, dogged courage that knew 
no end, he hung to the chase. He was after buft'alo, and buffalo he 
got. After a most successful trip he returned home. The denizens 
of 'Big Mouth Bob's' caravansary were prone to admdt that 'ther 
critter with a squint wxre plum handy with a gun.' 

"On Roosevelt the lesson of the Bad Lands was not lost. His keen 
eye took in those shiny valleys and sheltered ravines covered with 
bunch grass and sweet sage, upon which lolled in luxury countless 
herds of wild game. If this apparent waste would keep elk, deer and 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



179 



buffalo, why should it not keep cattle? Next spring he came again, 
but with more than six guns and a tooth brush. Behind him rolled 
train after train of stock, and all the equipments necessary for the 
making up of a practical camp. There was work for days and weeks, 
until gradually in the barren country there arose a ranch, busy with 
life and activity. The ranch was located eight miles south of Little 
Missouri, at a point where the lofty buttes receded, leaving a wide 
stretch of river bottom. 

From the brand adopted — the "Maltese Cross" — the ranch took its 
name, which it still retains. 

The ranch was a success from the start. Next spring saw the river 
bottom alive wath rollicking calves, while the big, clean beef steers 
lolled in the shade of the cottonwoods by the river bank in luxury. 
In the meantime another ranch had been established by Roosevelt 
called "Elkhorn" ranch, twenty-three miles north of the ''Maltese 
Cross." 

In the locating and establishment of these splendid ranches the 
young owner was omnipresent. First, out in the hills shooting a deer 
for meat; then in the saddle helping round up, or down on the ground 
in a violent wrestling contest with a husky calf that objected to the 
branding iron ; occasionally taking a solitary pilgrimage to the loneli- 
est buttes after mountain sheep. 

He was a good, though not a fancy shot. His success in hunting 
was due more to his dogged energy and grim untiring tenacity than 
to brilliant rifle work. He was particularly good at long range and 
running shots that require accurate judgment of light and distance; 
all the more remarkable as he sights through glasses. 

He had a beautiful collection of rifles. His favorite, however, was 
a plain Winchester of forty calibre. One of his rifles (an express) was 
beautifully inlaid with solid gold plates, exquisitely engraved. I 
have never seen him use it, however. 



180 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT, 



Roosevelt is a great lover of horses; particularly the half wild, 
wholly intelligent native horses. On the ranch he kept sixty. His 
first favorite was ''old Manitou," whose picture is here reproduced. 
It is a difficult thing to find a really good hunting pony; any one who 
has ever tried to lift a limp, freshly killed deer on a horse's back can 
understand this. "Manitou" was steady as a rock and a faithful com- 
panion until age gave him immunity from work. 

His saddle was a beauty; it weighed over fifty pounds and was 
valued at $125. It was of handsomely embossed leather, ornamented 
with silver. 

One morning late in the fall the round-up was camped on the 
Lagguy Camp range, the horses were brought in at daylight with 
frost on their backs and all in an ill humor. Roosevelt threw his 
saddle on a big roman nosed bay named Ben Butler. Ben was a 
natural-born degenerate. He was past master in pitching, ''sun- 
fishing" and high and lofty bucking. He was a crafty old villain, 
however, a.nd submitted to the tightening of the hair cinches with 
only a nasty roll of white in his eye. Roosevelt mounted and rapidly 
braced for the inevitable shock; but to the suspense of the assembled 
cowboys (three of whom had already been thrown), Ben trotted off 
at fxrst like a family cow. Then reaching a deep washout directly in 
front, he gave a bawl like a branded calf and went into the air. 

Down he came vvith his long neck poked under his fore legs, and 
with a shock that jarred the eai'th. Up he went again, the rider 
swiftly bracin.g back until his shoulders nearly touched tlie beast's 
loins. But with a trick that human skill could not avert, the horse 
spun in the air like a top and came down "all standing," or, as 
in as straight a perpendicular line as his evil skill could conceive. 

No human rider could withstand that shock and Roosevelt was 
thrown violently to the half frozen gTound. Some cowboys lassoed 
old Ben, who had taken to his heels at once, while the rider, pale 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



181 



and drawn-looking, but with a steady gleam in his eye, rose from the 
ground and insisted on remounting. This he did, although he did 
not tell us until later that three of his ribs were broken. 

"That young fellow's got sand in his craw a-plenty," sagely re- 
marked "Three Seven Bill," who was captain of the round-up. 

Bill was a gaunt, hungry-looking varmint, with a 14-inch waist and 
long, crooked legs that would have shamed an old-fashioned pair of 
tongs. Nothing deHghted him more than to "ride the tail offen them 
young fellers," as he called it, which meant to "haze the ground" 
hour after hour at a fourteen-mile clip; changing horses three times 
daily out of each rider's individual string of ten, he rode us to a 
finish. 

Saddle sore and half dead from exhaustion, I could many a time 
have wept from sheer agony, but on and on he rode us without 
mercy at a stiff run, makin-g a wide circle and retiring to camp only 
to up and at it again. 

Months of this work told on the trim young New Yorker. He 
became like the rest of us — gaunt, wind-swept and bleached white 
with alkali. Not a single time did he seek to take advantage of his 
larger wealth and station, but, like any common $40 cow-boy, stood 
up to his w^ork without a whimper. While I am free to confess I have 
freely used every invective in my vocabulary against that country and 
its inhabitants in general, I never but once knew him to complain. 

It was on a bitter night late in the fall of '86. The last beef 
round-up was nearing the home ranch, when a fierce storm of sleet 
and rain came on, accompanied with intense cold. All hands were up 
until midnight, quieting the big herd of uneasy beeves that had been 
gathered with so much effort. We had carefully worked them to the 
foot of "Chimney Butte," that in a measure protected them, and, with 
night guards doubled, a few of us returned to the drenched camp, 
worn out with exhaustion. 



182 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



Roosevelt and I slept together; our bed was of blankets spread 
on the wet, freezing ground, covered with a tarpaulin. W'ithout 
even removing our spurs, we crept into its shelter, and were almost 
instantly dead to the world. 

An hour later the call came, "All hands turn out; cattle breaking 
away," accompanied by the slashing of a wet lariat across the canvas. 
V/itli a hopeless groan I slipped out sideways and began to grope for 
my pony's picket line. 

Suddenly I heard a burst of picturesque language that expressed 
my thoughts exactly. 

*'Blank the blankety-blank country; blank the blankety-blank fool 
that would leave God's country for this blank" — but there are situa- 
tions in all lives too sacred for public scrutiny. 

This was the first, last and only time I ever knew him to use violent 
language. It seems that there had collected in the depression be- 
tween us on the tarpaulin that covered the bed a good-sized tubful 
of half frozen rain. In his attempt to rise my partner had incautiously 
raised his knees, which, of course, tipped the whole refrigerating out- 
fit over his head and shoulders. 

He was very popular with the cowboys by reason of his courage 
and grit. During the early years of his Bad Lands career a certain 
element that hung out around ''Big Afouth Bob's" elegant establish- 
ment at ''Little Misery" bitterly opposed the development of the 
stock industry. But there was organized the Little IMissouri Live 
Stock Association, with Theodore Roose^'elt as president. Never in 
my life shall I forget that meeting of not more than half a dozen men, 
outside of Bob's gang that had sneeringly trooped in. 

A certain deputy sheriff was the leader of the aggregation. Step- 
ping directly in front and with the reflection of the man's big revolver 
flashing across his glasses, Roosevelt scored him for a thief and 
scoundrel. Unarmed, he bitterly accused him of breaking his faith, 
and declared that instead of giving protection he encouraged lawless- 
ness and disorder- 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



Men of the frontier are peculiarly sensitive; an accusation that 
would be laughed at here eats out a man's heart who is bred there in 
solitude. Death stares a man closely in the face who calls another a 
liar, be he what he may. Somehow in this case, in a way that I can- 
not understand, the very forcefulness of the speaker, his un- 
conscious steely nerve cowed the accused into abject silence. But 
his prestige left him forever in that land. 

During "off times" on the range Roo'sevelt did a good deal of 
literary work. We could always tell when he was thinking about his 
writing by the way he used to thresh through the sage brush in front 
of the ranch with hands clasped behind him. His relaxation from this 
kind of work was to pick up the weakest and trashiest novel he could 
find, which he would read with avidity. 

Of all the ''bad" men that infested the country (and their name was 
legion), "Bad man Finegan" was cock of the walk. He said he came 
from Bitter Creek, where the further up you went the tougher the 
people got, and that his headquarters were at the fountain head. 
One day while peacefully sleeping ofif an overdose of Bob's "con- 
versation juice" the gang sheared his long red hair close to his head, 
leaving only a ridge like that of a roached mule. 

When he awoke his heart was bad. He sat down in the sage brush 
and pumped lead into everything in sight. He made pepper boxes 
of the houses and stampeded the citizens to the nearest timber like 
wild steers. 

Mr. Finegan was indeed a bad man. He shot "Blood Ran John's" 
oyster grotto full of holes and sent the editor of the Bad Lands Cow- 
boy into a cave at the foot of Graveyard Butte. Flushed with success, 
he stole a boat and floated down the river until he came to Roose- 
velt's "Elkhorn" ranch, from which he appropriated everything he 
fancied, and passed cheerfully on. 

As time went on and the influence of the sturdy ranchmen began 
to prevail, people began to flock into the squalid little shack town. 



184 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



which soon assumed all the vices and some of the virtues of the 
typical frontier settlement. The lav^less element, as a rule, respected 
the young ranchman, although deep mutterings against the invasion 
of his herds were the rule. 

While the social life of the frontier centers in the saloon, I never 
once saw him enter one. He was a ^^good fellow" with the cow-boys, 
but never when in the riotous debauchery of their occasional sprees. 
Next to hunting, he hked best his horses. The ''Maltese Cross" 
horses w^ere famed as the biggest, huskiest, most rampagious beasts 
in the Bad Lands. They were mostly half-breeds, with an appalling 
amount of vigor and evil ways. I brought one East wdth me six years 
ago. He lived to be 20, and I believe one of his last acts was to kick 
the front end off a farmer's milk wagon. 

Roosevelt's cattle, of w^hich he finally had about 3000, were half- 
bred natives and bore the Maltese cross on the left hip, with dewlap 
on brisket. During the first years of ranching he bred cattle, but 
later discountinued it. Only recently he sold the ranch, the buyer 
being his trusted guide and subsequent manager, Sylvane Ferris. 

As an evidence of the picturesque character of his associates it 
might be interesting to trace the careers of a few. "Big Mouth Bob" 
drank hard; served a term for murder in Bismarck jail, and now is a 
broken down man. 'Three Seven Bill" married the daughter of the 
section boss and is running a place of his own across the Montana 
line. 

"Three Fingered Jack," professional horse thief, was driven to the 
Powder River Mountains and frozen to death in a blizzard. Will 
Eaton is running a silver mine in Mexico. "Old Man Lebo," his 
early hunting partner, is raising potatoes up about Keogh Wail. 
William Mennifield is running a ranch in the Kootanci Valley. 
"Liver Eatin' Johnson the Squaw Man" is eating government rations 
up Buford v/ay. The Marquis De Mores was killed in Africa. 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



185 



It is hard to realize that the voice noAv given to dignified utterances 
upon which a nation hangs once was hffed in the roaring chorus, 
language. It seems that there had cohected in the depression be- 
"Ole Black Bull come down from the mountain," nor that the strong 
young hand that forced his unwilling horse to breast the current of 
a treacherous river should now be guiding a pen on whose track 
rests the destiny of seventy-five million souls." 

In parts this may seem almost like a repetition of what has gone 
before in speaking of 3.1r. Roosevelt as a hunter, but it is the word of 
an eye-witness who has in a Avay followed the fortunes of the man who 
in 1883 first was known to him, and who as a very }'oung man evinced 
those qualities which have since made him recognized the country 
over as the typical American, the man of staying powers, the man of 
honesty and truth and uprightness. 

But war was imminent; Spain was arrogant and insolent. The 
Assistant Secretary of the Xavy had his hands full. 'To be prepared 
for war is the miost effectual means to promote peace," Washington 
wrote a century ago. Thus, the x\ssistant Secretary of the Xavy 
was doing all that in him lay to prepare for war — and peace might or 
might not be promoted. In his address before the Naval War Col- 
lege, in June, 1897, he says that in this country there is not the 
slightest danger of an over-development of war-like spirit, and there 
ncA^er has been any such danger. In all our history, he says, there has 
been a time when preparedness for war was any menace to peace. 
On the contrary, again and again we have owed peace to the fact that 
we were prepared for war; and in the only contest which Ave have had 
with a European power since the Revolution, the war of 18 12 was 
due solely to the fact that we were not prepared to face, nor ready 
instantly to resent, an attack upon our honor and interest. We are 
a great peaceful nation, a nation of merchants and manufacturers, of 
farmers and mechanics, a nation of workingmen who labor incessantly 



186 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



with head and hand. It is therefore idle to talk of such a nation being 
led into a course of wanton aggression or conflict with military 
powers by the possession of a sufficient Navy. The danger was of 
precisely the opposite character, he goes on to say, as, if we forget 
that in the last resort we can only secure peace by being ready and 
willing to fight for it; we may some day have bitter cause to realize 
that a rich nation which is slothful, timid or unwieldy is an easy prey 
for any people which still retains those most valuable of all qualities, 
the soldierly virtues. We but keep to the traditions of Washington, 
to the traditions of all the great Americans who struggled for the real 
greatness of America when we strive to build up those fighting quali- 
ties for the lack of wdiich in a nation, as in an individual, no refine- 
ment, no culture, no wealth, no material prosperity can atone. Pre- 
paration for war is the surest guarantee for peace, he continues. 
Arbitration is an excellent thing, but those who wish to see this 
country at peace with foreign nations vrill be wise if they place re- 
liance upon a first-class fleet of first-class battleships rather than on 
any arbitration treaty the wit of man can get up. It is not only true 
that a peace may be so ignoble and degrading as to be far worse than 
war, but it is also true that it may be accompanied by more bloodshed 
than most wars. ''Of this there has been melancholy proof during the 
last two years. Thanks largely to the very unhealthy influence of 
the men whose business it is to speculate in the money m.arket, and 
who approach every subject from the financial standpoint solely; and 
thanks quite as much to the cold blooded brutality and calculating 
timidity of many European rulers and statesmicn, the peace of Europe 
has been preserved, while the Turk has been allovred to butcher the 
Armenians with hideous and unmentionable barbarity, and has actu- 
ally been helped to keep Crete in slavery. War has been averted at 
the cost of more bloodshed and infinitely miore suftering and degra- 
dation to wretched women and children than have occurred in any 
European struggle since the days of AA'aterloo." 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



187 



No matter what high ideals may make of the future and ehminate 
the need of war, as yet no nation can hold it place in the world or can 
do any work really worth doing unless it stands ready to guard its 
rights with an armed hand. We of the United States have passed 
most of our years of national life in peace. We should honor the 
architects of our wonderful material prosperity, but we feel after all 
that tlie men who have dared greatly in war are those who deserve 
best of the country. The men of Bunker Hill, and Trenton, Saratoga 
and Yorktown, the men of New Orleans and Mobile Bay, Gettysburg 
and Appomattox, are those to whom we owe most. The Americans 
who stand highest on the lists of the world's great men are Washing- 
ton, who fought to found the country which he afterward governed; 
and Lincoln, who saved it through the blood of the bravest and best 
of the land. 

It is on men such as these, and not on the advocates of ''peace at 
any price," or upon those who are so shortsighted that they refuse 
to take intG account the possibilities of war, that we must rely in 
every crisis which deeply touches the true greatness and true honor 
of the Republic. 

The men who to-day protest against a Navy, and protest against 
every movement to carry out the traditional policy of the country 
in foreign affairs, and uphold the honor of the flag, are only following 
in the footsteps of those who protested against the acquisition of the 
great West, and who failed to make proper preparation for the war 
of 1812, or refused to support it after it had been made. 

He does not believe that any considerable number of our citizens 
are stamped with this timid lack of patriotism. There are some 
whose eyes are so firmly fixed on the golden vision of universal peace 
that they cannot see the real facts of real life till they stumble over 
them and get hurt; and there are some educated men in whom edu- 
cation only serves to soften the fiber and to take away the higher and 



188 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



sterner qualities that make for national greatness; these men prate 
about love for mankind, or for another country, as being in some 
vague way a substitute for love of their own country; and what is of 
more weight is that there are men of means who are always ready to 
balance a temporary interruption of money-making, or a temporary 
financial and commercial disaster, against the self-sacrifice necessary 
in upholding the honor of the nation and the glory of the flag. It 
has always been true, and in this age it is m.ore than ever true, that it 
is too late to prepare for war when the time for peace is over. The 
men who opposed the war of 1812, and would rather have the nation 
humiliated by unresented insult from a foreign power ''than see her 
sufTer the losses of an honorable conflict, occupied a position little 
short of contemptible; but it was not much worse than that of the 
men who brought on the war, and yet deliberately refused to make 
the preparations necessary to carry it to a successful conclusion. The 
visionary scheme for defending the country by gunboats instead of 
by a fleet of sea-going battleships; the refusal to increase the Navy 
to a proper size; the determination to- place reliance upon militia in- 
stead of upon regularly trained troops; and the disasters which fol- 
lowed upon each other and every one of these determinations should 
be studied in every school-book in the land so as tO' enforce in the 
minds of all. our citizens the truth Oif Washington's adage that 'In 
time of peace it is necessary to prepare for war.' " 

As this applied to 1812, it applies to the present day. Then, as 
now, it was the Navy the country had to depend upon in case of war 
with a foreign power, and then, as now, one of the foremost duties 
of a wise and far-seeing statesmanship should have been the building 
up of a good fighting Navy. 

The failure to provide such a Navy in 181 2 was followed by untold 
evils, for the fine efforts of the few cruisers we had proved what might 
have been done if we had had a fleet of battleships of some size. 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



189 



Ships and men were more easily supplied at the beginning of the 
century than is the case now. Now it takes months to build ships 
and guns, where it then took weeks at most, and in these days it takes 
far longer to train men to the management of the vast and compli- 
cated engines with which war is carried on. In which case it takes 
a much longer time to make the proper preparation, while at the same 
time wars are much quicker now, last so comparatively short a time, 
and can be begun so quickly that there is far less time than formerly 
to make preparations. 

It takes two years in this country to build a battleship. Cruisers 
would take nearly as long. Under ninety days the small torpedo 
bo-ats could not be made available for use. Guns require two or three 
months for their construction; the larger ones can not be made in 
less than eight months. It takes a corresponding length of time to 
get up rifles and military munitions of all kinds. In most cases we 
should be compelled to build not only the weapons, but the plant 
in which they are to be made in any large quantities. 

''Even if the enemy did not interfere with our efforts which they 
undoubtedly would, it would therefore take from three to six months 
after the outbreak of a war for which we were unprepared before we 
could in the slightest degree remedy our unreadiness. We must 
therefore make up our minds once for all to the fact that it is too late 
to make ready for war when the fight has once begun. The prepara- 
tions must come before that. In the case of the Civil War, none of 
these conditions applied. In 1861 we had a good fleet, and the 
Southern Confederacy had not a ship. We were able to blockade 
the Southern ports ?t once, and we could improvise engines of war 
more than suflicient to Dut against those of an enemy which also had 
to improvise them, and who labored under even more disadvantages. 
The Monitor was got ready in the nick of time to meet the Merri- 
mac, because the Confederates had to plan and build the latter while 



190 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



we were building and planning the former; but if ever we have to go 
to war with a modern military power we shall find its Merrimacs 
already built, and it will then be altogether too late to build Monitors 
to meet them." 

There must be adequate preparation made for possible conflict un- 
less w^e would court disaster. And preparations must take the shape of 
an efficient fighting Navy. America has no foe able to conquer or 
overrun its territory. Our not very large army should always be kept 
in first-rate condition, while every attention should be paid to the 
National Guard; but neither on the North or on the South has 
iVmerica neighbors capable of menacing or long resisting a serious 
effort on our part to invade them. 

"The enemies we may have to face will come from over sea; they 
may come from Europe, or they may come from Asia. Events move 
fast in the West, but this generation has been forced to see that they 
move even faster in the oldest East. Our interests are as great in 
the Pacific as in the Atlantic; in the Hawaiian Islands as in the West 
Indies. Merely for the protection of our shores we need a great 
Navy, and what is more we need it to protect our interests in the^ 
observance in the two Americas and the islands on either side of 
them. If a foreign power, whether in Europe or in Asia, should de- 
termine to assert its position in those lands wherein we feel that our 
influence should be supreme, there is but one way in which we can 
effectively interfere. Diplomacy is utterly useless w^hen there is no 
force behind it; the diplomat is the servant, not the master, of the 
soldier. The prosperity of peace, commercial and material prosperity, 
gives no w^eight whatever when the clash of arms comes. Even great 
naked strength is useless if there is no immediate means through 
which that strength can manifest itself. If we mean to protect the 
people of the lands who look to us for protection from tyranny and 
aggression; if we mean to uphold our interests in the teeth of the 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



191 



formidable Old World powers, we can only do it by being ready at 
any time, if the provocation is sufficient, to meet them on the seas 
where the battle for supremacy must be fought. Unless we are pre- 
pared so to meet them let us abandon all talk of devotion to the 
Monroe Doctrine or to the honor of the American name." 

If it wishes to retain its self-respect most certainly this nation can- 
not stand still and keep undimmed the honored traditions inherited 
from the men whose swords founded and preserved it. Mr. Roose- 
velt asks that the work of upbuilding our Navy, and of putting the 
United States where it should be, go forward without hesitation. The 
whole country should ask it, and did, not in the interest of war, but 
in the interest of peace. A nation should never fight unless forced 
to fight, but it should always be ready to fight. The mere fact that 
it is in trim for fighting will generally spare it the necessity of fighting. 

'Tf this country now had a fleet of twenty-five ships of battle their 
existence would make it all the more likely that we should not have 
war. It is very important that we should as a race keep the virile 
fighting qualities and should be ready to use them at need; but it is 
not at all important to use them unless there is need. One of the 
surest ways to attain these qualities is to keep our Navy in first-class 
trim. There never is and never has been on our part a desire to use 
a weapon because of its being well tempered. There is not the least 
danger that the possession of a good Navy will render this country 
overbearing toward its neighbors. The direct contrary is the truth. 
An unmanly desire to avoid a quarrel is often the surest way to pre- 
cipitate one, and utter unreadiness to fight is even surer. * * * 
If in the future we have war it will almost certainly come from some 
action or lack of action on our part in the way of refusing to accept 
responsibilities at the proper time, or failing to prepare for war when 
war does not threaten. An ignoble peace is even worse than an un- 
successful war, but an unsuccessful war should leave behind it a 



192 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



legacy of bitter memories which would hurt our national develop- 
ment for a generation to come. It is true that no nation could actu- 
ally conquer us, owing to our isolated position; but we could be 
seriously harmed, even materially, by disasters that stopped far short 
of conquest; and in these matters, which are far more important than 
things material, we could readily be damaged beyond repair. No' 
material loss can begin to compensate for the loss of national self- 
respect. The damage to our commercial interests by the destruction 
of one of our coast cities would be as nothing compared to the 
humiliation which would be felt by every American worthy of the 
name if we had to submit to such an injury without amply avenging 
it. It has been finely said that 'A gentleman is one who is willing to 
lay down his life for little things;' that is, for those things which seem 
little to the man who cares only whether shares rise or fall in value, and 
to the timid doctrinaire who preaches timid peace from his cloistered 
study. Much of that which is best and highest in national character 
is made up of glorious memories and traditions. The fight well 
fought, the life honorably lived, the death bravely met — those count 
for more in building a high and fine type of temper in a nation than 
any possible success in the stock market, than any possible prosperity 
in commerce or manufactures. A rich banker may be a valuable and 
useful citizen, but not a thousand rich bankers can leave to the 
country such a heritage as Farragut left, when lashed in the rigging 
of the Hartford, he forged past the forts, and over the unseen death 
below, to try his wooden stem against the ironclad hull of the 
great Confederate ram. The people of some given section of our 
country may be better off because a shrewd and wealthy man has 
built up therein a great manufacturing business, or has extended a 
line of railroad past its doors, but the whole nation is better, the 
whole nation is braver because Gushing pushed his little torpedo boat 
through the darkness to sink beside the sinking Albemarle. 



f>AtRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



"Every feat of heroism makes us forever indebted to the man who 
performed it. All daring and courage, all iron endurance of mis- 
fortune, all devotion to the ideal of honor and the glory of the flag 
make for a finer and a nobler type of manhood. It is not only those 
who do and endure who are benefited, but also the countless thou- 
sands who are not themselves called upon to face the peril, to show 
the strength, or to wan the reward. All of us lift o-ur heads higher 
because those of our countrymen whose trade it is to meet danger 
have met it well and bravely. All of us are poorer for every base or 
ignoble deed done by an American, for every instance of selfishness 
or weakness or folly on the part of the people as a whole. We are 
all worse off when any of us fails at any point in his duty toward the 
State in time of peace, or his duty toward the State in time of war. 
If ever'we had to meet defeat at the hands of a foreign foe, or had to 
submit tamely to wrong or insult, every man among us worthy of the 
name of an American would feel dishonored and debased. 

''On the other hand, the memory of every triumph won by Ameri- 
cans, by just so much helps to make each American nobler and better. 
Every man among us is more fit to meet the duties and responsi- 
bilities of citizenship because of the perils over which in the past the 
nation has triumphed; because of the blood and swxat and tears, the 
labor and the anguish through which in the days that have gone our 
forefathers moved on to triumph. There are higher things in this 
life than the soft and easy enjoyment of material comfort. It is 
through strife or the readiness for strife that a nation must win great- 
ness. We ask for a great Navy, partly because we think that the pos- 
session of such a Navy is the surest guarantee of peace, and partly 
because we feel that no national life is worth having if the nation is 
not willing when the need shall arise to stake everything on the 
supreme arbitration of war, and to pour out its blood, its treasure. 



194 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



and its tears like water, rather than to submit to the loss of honor 
and renown. 

'In closing, let me repeat that we ask for a great Xavy, we ask for 
an armament fit for the nation's needs, not primarily to fight, but to 
avert fighting. Preparedness deters the foe, and maintains right by 
the show of ready might wdthout the use of violence. Peace, like 
freedom, is not a gift that tarries long in the hands of cow^ards, or 
of those too feeble or too short-sighted to desen^e it; and we ask to 
be given the means to insure that honorable peace which alone is 
worth having." 

Imagine this speech, delivered when the troubles wath Spain were 
fomenting, and when youth and bravery in the country w^as holding 
its head high, its eye bright, at the thought of a chance to take up 
arms for the land we called our own\ Nor are the sentimenis of this 
speech those of a man who sits idly by when the honor of his country 
is threatened. 

When war had been actually declared Mr. Roosevelt submitted his 
resignation to the President, April i6th, and tried to get an appoint- 
ment on General Lee's staff. Then came the Rough Rider idea — 
hardly thought of before realized. ''Roosevelt's Rough Riders" — 
the name struck the popular fancy, and the regiment became famous 
before it was organized. 

During Mr. Roosevelt's summer months on his ranch in Dakota 
he had learned to know and appreciate cow-boys as courageous men, 
strong to bear the hardships of war. From such men the Rough 
Riders w^ere* cliiefiy recruited. Four 3^ears' membership in the Eighth 
Regiment of the New' York State National Guard, to w^hich Mr. 
Roosevelt belonged from 1884 to 1888, and in Avhich he -was for a 
time a captain, furnished at least a basis for his militar}^ career. But 
more than all else that induced him. to go to the front was his de- 
votion to the cause for which the war was to be fought and his love 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



197 



of active life. These same reasons drew to him scores of young men 
of prominent famihes from all parts of the country, who joined the 
Western cavalrymen to go and fight the Spaniards. The regiment 
thus formed w^as known as "Roosevelt's Rough Riders/' although 
it was commanded by Colonel Wood, of the Regular Army, Roose- 
velt being second in command, with the rank, until promoted, of lieu- 
tenant-colonel. 



CHAPTER X. 



The Rough Riders— Mustering Places of Regiment— Colonel Wood and Lieu- 
tenant-Colonel Roosevelt— Men from Colleges, Clubs, Police Force, Cowboys, 

Miners, Indians — Personnel of Some of the Men — Appreciation of Colonel 
Roosevelt — "Remember the Maine" — Trouble in Getting Matters Organized — 

Drilling-grounds — Union of Rough Riders — Impatient to go into Action — 
Orders to Move. 

r I ^ HE mustering places of the regiment were in New Mexico, 



Arizona, Oklahoma, and Indian Territory. The difficulty 



experienced was not in selecting the men but in rejecting 
them, for in a day or so after it was announced that there was to be 
such a regiment the officers were deluged with applications from 
every part of the Union. Hundreds of regiments were called into 
existence by the National Government, and each one was sure to 
want equipment, and their wants would not be satisfied quickly 
enough for a man like Colonel Roosevelt, who had little patience with 
red-tapeism. 

Colonel Wood, who knew how unprepared the country was for 
war, and its needs, also knew it was very important to get in the 
demands of the Rough Riders as soon as possible. In spite of the 
slowness of bureaucrats, he succeeded in getting rifles, cartridges, 
revolvers, clothing, shelter tents and horse-gear just in time for the 
Santiago expedition. Colonel Wood was acquainted with the inesti- 
mable advantage of smokeless powder, and, besides, he wished the 
Rough Riders to have the shooting irons of regulars. This meant 
that the Rough Riders would form brigades with the regulars, and 
it was pretty sure the regulars would do the bulk of the lighting if 
the war did not last too long. By acting with the greatest prompt- 




199 



200 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



ness he had his men armed with the Krag-Jorgensen carbine used 
by the regular cavahy. The regiment was allowed to be made tip 
of companies from the four territories exclusively; but as the original 
number of seven hundred and eighty was raised to a thousand, 
chances w^ere given to volunteers w^ho did not come from the Terri- 
tories. Recruits came from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and other 
colleges, while exclusive clubs of Boston and New York contributed 
to fill the vacancies; and besides these there were men who did not 
belong to colleges or clubs. Four policemen who had served under 
Colonel Roosevelt wdien he was President of the New York Police 
Board insisted upon coming, and it seemed that friends of Colonel 
Roosevelt in every State wished to accompany him to the scene of 
action in Cuba. 

Harvard being Colonel Roosevelt's own particular college, so 
many applications were made from its students that not a tenth of 
them could be taken; and they and the other college m.en did not ask 
for commissions, they were content to go as plain troopers. They 
sought to enter the ranks of the Rough Riders as though it nleant 
anything but the hardest kind of work, rough fare and possibly death. 
Colonel Roosevelt said that he felt doubtful at first of letting men of 
this stamp come in, for he was, not certain that they had counted the 
cost of serving in the ranks; but as they would come, and plainly 
knew their own minds, they were allowed to pass muster. Before 
having them sworn in, however. Colonel Roosevelt got them to- 
gether and told them that if they went in they must expect not only 
fighting, but to perform the laborious, wearisome labor incident to 
the ordinary, soldier's life; that there w'ould be privations, and fevers, 
and other sicknesses, and that they must obey orders unquestion- 
ingly and do their duty, no matter what the assignment to it might 
mean to their comfort. Not one of them backed out. 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



201 



Of the regiment, though, these men formed but a small fraction. 
Colonel Wood was in San Antonio, and this contingent was sent to 
him, while Colonel Roosevelt spent a week in Washington hurrying 
up the different bureaus and getting things generally in shape. Then 
he went down to San Antonio and found the men from the Terri- 
tories, who made up the bulk of the regiment, and gave it its peculiar 
character. They came from the four Teritories that yet remained in 
the boundaries of the United States, from lands only recently won 
over to white civilization, and where the conditions of life were still 
rude and unaffected by the elegancies of the East. They were 
magnificent specimens of men, tall and sinewy, with stern, weather- 
beaten faces, and eyes that looked any man in the face. They were 
the wild rough riders of the plains, used to handling untamed savage 
horses, and used to hunting with the' rifle as well for sport as for a 
means of living. Most of them had, one time or another, herded 
cattle and shot big game. They were used to life in the open and to 
looking out for themselves under adverse circumstances, and to the 
lawless freedom of the plains and the hardships of the round-up and 
mining camps. A few had come from small frontier towns, but the 
majority from the wilderness, the hunters' cabins and the cow camps, 
and were in glaring contrast to the college men and club men used tO' 
the soft amenities of life — the opera and the ball-room, the well- 
ordered athletic field, and glossy horses trained by jockeys. The 
captains and lieutenants were after men of the regular army — men 
who had gone against Apache, Ute, and Cheyenne, and who, ending 
their terms of service, had settled in the new communities and be- 
come prominent men. But not all were such, there were sheriffs and 
deputy-sheriffs, marshals and deputy-marshals, strong men who had 
waged war on Indians, or upon bands of desperate white renegades. 

'There was Bucky O'Neill, of Arizona, captain of Troop A, the 
mayor of Prescott, a famous sheriff throughout the West for his feats 



202 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



of victorious warfare against the Apache, no less than against the 
white road-agents and men-killers. His father had fought in 
Meagher's Brigade in the Civil War, and he himself a born soldier, 
a leader of men. He was a wild, reckless fellow, soift-spoken, and of 
dauntless courage and boundless ambition; he was staunchly loyal to 
his friends, and cared for his men in every vray. There was Captain 
Llewellen, o;f New Mexico, a good citizen, a political leader, and one 
of the most noted peace-officers of the country; he had been shot four 
times in pitched fights with red marauders and white outlaws. There 
was Lieutenant Ballard, who had broken up the Black Jack gang of 
ill-omened notoriety, and his captain, Curry, another New ]\Iexican 
sheriff of fame. The officers from the Indian Territory had almost 
all served as marshals and deputy-marshals; and in the Indian Terri- 
tory service as a deputy-marshal mjcant capacity to figh.^ stand-up 
battles with gangs of outlaws. Three of our highest officers had been 
in the regular army. One was Major Alexander Brodie, from 
Arizona, afterward Lieutenant-Colonel, who had lived for twenty 
years in the Territory, and had become a thorough Westerner with- 
out sinking the West Pointer — a soldier by taste as well as training, 
whose men worshiped him and would follow him everywhere, as they 
would Bucky O'Neill or any -other of their favorites. Brodie was 
running a big mining business, but when the Maine was blown up 
he abandoned everything and telegraphed right and left to bid 
his friends get ready for the fight he saw impending. There was 
Micah Jenkins, the captain of Troop K, a gentle and courteous South 
Carolinian, on whom danger acted Hke wine. In action he was a 
perfect gamecock, and he won his majority for gallantry in battle. 
Finally, there was All}n Capron, who was, on the whole, the best 
soldier in the regiment. In fact, I think he was the ideal of what 
an American regular army officer should be. He was the fifth in 
descent from father to son who had serv^ed in the Army of the United 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



203 



States, and in body and mind alike he was fitted to play his part to 
perfection. Tall and lithe, a remarkable boxer and walker, a first- 
class rider and shot, with yellow hair and piercing blue eyes, he 
looked what he was — the archetype of the fighting man. He had 
under him one of the two companies from the Indian Territory, and 
he so soon impressed himself upon the wild spirit of his followers 
that he got them ahead in discipline faster than any other troop in 
the regiment, while at the same time taking care of their bodily wants. 
His ceaseless effort was so to train them, care for them, and inspire 
them as to bring their fighting efiiciency to the highest possible pitch. 
He required instant obedience, and tolerated not the slightest evasion 
of duty; but his mastery of his art was so thorough and his per- 
formance of his own duty so rigid that he won at once not merely 
their admiration, but that soldierly affection so readily given by the 
man in the ranks to the superior who cares for his men and leads them 
fearlessly in battle." 

Thus Colonel Roosevelt writes of his officers, appreciatively, 
more than kindly, himself filled with affection for brave men and 
fearless fighters. He had gathered round him officers for his regi- 
ment from every station of life — cow-boys, college graduates — and 
no matter what might be their social position they had come to fight 
in the interests of their country, hardy and brave and ready for any 
adventure on the field of battle. 

Colonel Roosevelt's name was the synonym for bravery and endur- 
ance, he had already served his city, his State and the country well 
and often when the odds had been against him, he was a college man 
and a gentleman, a plainsman and a hunter, and such a man, together 
with his personality, was bound tO' attract just such officers when he 
raised a regiment to go and battle against a foe who dared to encroach 
upon the land that was so dear to him and which he had so often 
spoken of in terms of the American and the patriot. 



204 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



So much for the officers. The men in the ranks to a large extent 
were young, though some were middle aged. Colonel Roosevelt's 
popularity in the far West was bound to secure for the Rough 
Riders just such men as now flocked to enlist — those who had killed 
buffalo, those who had fought the redskins when the tribes were still 
on the war path. The very young ones had led rough lives as well, 
had gone through hardship and danger, many having originally come 
from the East ripe for adventure, sailing around the Horn and 
mining in Alaska. Others had been born and bred in the West which 
they had never left, and had never seen a great city. Some did not 
go by their own names; others rejoiced in only half a name, an 
adjective supplying the apparent neglect — Cherokee Bill, Happy 
Jack of Arizona, Smoky Moore the bronco buster, so called because 
in cow-boy dialect a vicious horse is often a "smoky" horse. Then 
there was Rattlesnake Pete, who had consorted familiarly among the 
Moquis Indians, and taking part in snake-dances earned his sobri- 
quet. Among others were professional gamblers, while four of five 
Baptist or Methodist clergymen, in good or bad standing, helped to 
swell the ranks and were good fighters when the time came to show 
what they could do. Others again there were whose past reputations 
were of the shadiest kind, crime such as flourishes on the borderland 
between civilization and savagery having claimed them. But the 
larger body had sensed at different times in the armed bands of men 
who are pioneers of civilization in putting down the savagery of 
newly-acquired territory. Then the Indians came. There were 
Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws and Creeks, some of full blood, 
others half breeds or shaded off until it was difficult to detect the dif- 
ference between them and the white troopers with whom they came 
to live in perfect equanimity. One of the best fighters and bravest 
men in the regiment was Pollock, a full blooded Pawnee. He was 
an educated man, as were most of the other Indians, having been 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



207 



taught in one of the Indian schools. He was a silent, solitary fellow 
and an excellent penman, and when the regiment got to Santiago 
he became regimental clerk. Another of the Indians came from 
Texas where he had been brakeman on the Southern Pacific Railroad. 
He wrote to Colonel Roosevelt, telling him he wished to enHst, and 
he was taken. He w^as named Colbert, which name at once attracted 
the Colonel's attention, for he was familiar with the history of the 
Cherokees and Chickasaws during the eighteenth century, when 
those tribes had foregathered East of the Mississippi. Early in the 
eighteenth century many traders, who were chiefly Scotchmen settled 
among the Indians and married dusky maidens, and the half-breed 
descendants of a Scotchman named Colbert became celebrated chiefs 
of the Chickasaws. Colonel Roosevelt had the man come to him and 
found as he supposed that he was a descendant of the old Chickasaw 
chiefs. Colbert brought intO' the regiment his ''partner," who was a 
white man. The two men had been boon companions for years and 
were always together in the regiment. 

There were other Indians whose names were recognized by Col- 
onel Roosevelt, who knew so much about the West and the tribal 
people there. One of the Cherokees was named Adair, and on in- 
quiry the Colonel discovered that he w^as descended from the man 
who a hundred years ago wrote a huge volume, interesting to-day, 
about the Cherokees, with whom he had spent years of his life as a 
trader and an agent, and who also married into the tribe. 

"I don't know," says Colonel Roosevelt, ''that I ever came across 
a man with a really sweeter nature than another Cherokee named 
Holderman. He w^as an excellent soldier, and for a long time acted 
as cook for the headquarters' mess. He was a half breed and came of 
a soldier stock on both sides and through both races. He explained 
to me once why he had come to the war; that it was because his 
people always had fought when there had been a war, and he could 



208 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



not feel happy to stay at home when the flag was going into battle. 
Two of the young Cherokees came to me with a most kincllv letter 
from one of the ladies who had been teaching in the Academy from 
vrhich they were about to graduate. She and I had known each 
other in connection with governmental and philanthropic work on 
the reservations, and she vs-rote to commend the two bovs to mv 
attention. One was on the Academy foot-ball team and the other 
in the glee-club. Both were fine young fellows. The foot-ball player 
now lies buried with the other dead who fell in the fight at San Juan. 
The singer was brought to death's door by fever, but recovered and 
went back to his home." 

A wilder type of Indians also entered the regiment, their wildness 
like that of the cov\'-boys -vdth Vvdiom they had long associated, and 
some had characters vdiich had much to be desired in them and re- 
quired the discipline of army life to bring them to a realization of the 
error of their ways. ]\Iany of the recruij;s came from Texas, and 
these were, perhaps, of the highest average, for most of them had 
served in the famous body of frontier fighting men. the Texas 
Rangers. They needed no teaching in military discipline, for thev 
knew how to obey without question and how to assume responsi- 
bility. These troopers to a man were fine shots, and horsemen 
and trailers, and having lived so much in the open thev were 
capable of tremendous endurance and used to conquering almost 
insuperable difficulty. The Arizona and Xew }^Iexico men had, 
largely, taken part in the wars against the Apaches, who are 
the wildest of all the American red men and most formidable 
in their own method of warfare. Any man who had held 
his own, kept his nerve and a firm hand after living in a section vrhere 
at any moment he might come across hidden death from a foe who 
was sly and treacherous in the extreme, v-as scarcely apt to quail 
before an enemw arrayed in the modern mode of civilized battle. 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



209 



These men had fought and trailed the Apaches, were keen to face 
danger, and watchful and alert, while their pulses were steady and 
their aim good to bring down a foe that opposed them. One of the 
men in the exercise of his peculiar office of peace-officer had had a 
half of one of his ears bitten off in an amicable tiff with a man who 
thought he would question the authority of an officer who wished to 
put him down. There were also bronco-busters from Oklahoma who 
never walked if they could by any possibility ride. One of them on 
being reproved for not keeping step on the drill ground said that all 
he knew was that he could keep step with any man when on horse- 
back, for his legs were short and marches were troublesome to him. 
''One old friend of mine had come from far Northern Idaho to join 
the regiment at San Antonio. He was a hunter, named Fred Herrig, 
an Alsatian by birth. A dozen years before he and I had hunted 
mountain sheep and deer when laying in my winter stock of meat 
for my ranch on the Little ^Missouri, sometimes in the bright fall 
weather, sometimes in the Arctic bitterness of the early Northern 
winter. He was the most loyal and simple-hearted of men, and he 
had come to join his old 'boss' and comrade in the bigger hunting 
which we were to carry on through the tropic mid-summer. 

The ability to draw men to him was never made more apparent 
than when Colonel Roosevelt got up his regiment. He had fra- 
ternized with all sorts and conditions of men, never losing his dignity 
in doing so, and whether it was in the far West at round-ups and with 
cow-boys or hunting buffalo or deer,* and other game; whether it was 
in the sordid haunts of New York city politics, making speeches at 
the hustings before frowzled men and the flash fraternity that had 
the m.eetings in hand; whether it was in the official precincts of 
politicians where rulership was with other sorts of men; in State 
Assembly; at the capital as Assistant Secretary of the Navy; among 
studious men and authors; in drawing rooms and clubs — it was one 



210 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



and the same thing, his individuality was recognized, his power 
known,, his friendly, genial manner appreciated and his stern desire 
for justice and right comprehended. So that when he would go to 
war when there had been insult offered to the flag he held with so 
much veneration, men who had known him or heard of him in his 
various offices and capacities flocked to him to support him, for he 
was a man of men. they could trust and believe in him, and under his 
standard they were willing and anxious to trust their own reputations, 
their lives. In speaking appreciatively of the regimxcnt that had been 
raised, Colonel Roosevelt finds that the temptation is great to go on 
and enumerate man after man who stood out from the mass — 
hunters, tamers of horses, men who had put down disorder in wild 
communities, Rocky ^Mountain stage drivers who had resisted road 
agents and saved the quaking passengers of the stages, miners, cow- 
punchers, ropers of wild steers in the mesquit brush of the Xueces, 
coll'ege men, club men, business men, clerks. Such were the men 
who composed the regiment, men used to hardship and privation, 
soldiers who were ready made so far as capacity as individual fighters 
was concerned; and men who knew Httle of the harder phases of out- 
door life except that learned on the athletic field, in sailing yachts or 
having mounts of blooded horses, but who were also soldiers at heart 
and in spirit, men to whom the traditions of their country meant 
much and with whom the honor of America was a dear possession 
and in whose veins leaped the blood of patriots till they burned with 
the desire to go on the field of carnage and let Spain know how well 
they 'remembered the ]\Iaine.' " 

The special task of Colonel Wood and Lieutenant-Colonel Roose- 
velt was to teach the incongruous set of men to act together and 
obey orders in military manner. And the most important task was 
to make them ready in the shortest possible length of time. They 
were bound to see fighting for they were to be among the first to 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. . 211 

leave the United States, and no one could tell how much fighting 
there would be nor how long the fighting would last. They were 
filled with enthusiasm, especially those who had never had experience 
outside of college, club and drawing-room, and anxious to face the 
enemy, being certain that enthusiasm and patriotism might well take 
the place of technicality of instruction. Though when it came to en- 
forcing discipline Colonel Roosevelt tells us that he was agreeably 
disappointed. The hard characters fromi the West who might have 
given trouble with few exceptions grasped the idea that without dis- 
cipline they would be a mere useless mob, and they set about learning 
the new duties; the other kind of men, the "'tenderfeet/' as the ruder 
element might dub them, were as eager to- do as they were told, and 
however irksome the tactics might be their intelligence grasped 
quickly what their limited physical endurance found at first more 
difficult to perform. 

''Of course such a regiment in spite of, or I might almost say 
because of, the characteristics which made the individual men ex- 
ceptionally formidable as soldiers, could very easily have been spoiled. 
Any weakness in the command would have ruined it. On the other 
hand, to treat it from the standpoint of the martinet and military 
pedant would have been almost equally fatal. From the beginning 
we started out to secure the essentials of discipline, while laying just 
as little stress as possible on the non-essentials. The men were 
singularly quick to respond to any appeal to their intelligence and 
patriotism. The faults they committed were those due to ignorance 
only. When Holderman in announcing dinner to the Colonel and 
the three IMajors genially remarked, Tf you fellows don't come soon 
every thing'll get cold' ; he had no thought of other than a kindly 
regard for their welfare, and was glad to modify his form of address 
on being told that it was not what could be described as convention- 
ally military. Wlien one of our sentinals who had with much labor 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



learned the manual of arms saluted with great pride as I passed, and 
added with a friendly nod, 'good evening. Colonel,' this variation in 
the accepted formula on such occasions was meant and was accepted 
as mere friendly interest. In both cases the needed instruction was 
given and received in the same kindly spirit. One of the new Indian 
Territory recruits after twenty-four hours stay in camp, during which 
he had steadily held himself from the general interests, called on the 
Colonel in his tent and remarked, 'Well, Colonel, I want to shake 
hands and say we're with you. We didn't know how we would like 
you fellows at first, but you're all right; you know your business- 
and you mean business, and you can count on us every time.' That 
same night, which was hot, mosquitoes^ were very annoying, and 
shortly after midnight both the Colonel and I came to the doors of 
our respective tents, which adjoined one another. The sentinel in 
front was also fighting mosquitoes. As we came out we saw him 
pitch his gun about ten feet off and sit down to attack some of the 
pests which had swarmed up his trousers' leg. Happening to glance 
in our direction he nodded pleasantly and with unabashed and 
friendly feeling remarked, 'Ain't they bad?' " 

Though in a very little while the raw men got over these trifling 
peculiarities, as time wore on they recognized the fact that the 
observation of certain forms was very necessary to the observance of 
military discipline. They realized the truth that such forms were 
not intended to humiliate them or to show them that their position 
was inferior, but only a proper part of the discipline; they understood 
that the officers were as anxious to learn their own duties as to have 
the men learn theirs, and that the officers were as careful to pay their 
respect to their superiors in rank as they were prompt in exacting the 
respect of the rank and file for their own offices. What was equally 
important, the men saw that their officers were careful to look after 
their interests in every way, and were doing all in their power to 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



213 



hasten the equipment and drill of the regiment and proceed to war. 
Rigid guard duty was established and the policing of the camp was 
attended to with the greatest vigilance. Drills went on, on foot first, 
and were interesting to the men and became excellent. Every night 
there was an officers' school, the non-commissioned officers also 
being schooled by the Captain or one of the Lieutenants of the troop. 
Every day there was hard practice by squad, by squadron, by bat- 
talion. Americans are proverbially intelligent, and the men of the 
regiment were not behind in the national characteristic. In a short 
time it became easy to handle the regiment in the less complex forms 
of close and open order. When the men had so far advanced that 
they marched well and were up in the ordinary manoeuvres of the 
drill-ground, they were trained in open-order work, skirmishing and 
firing. The knowledge of the far Western men helped them con- 
siderably in these, while to skirmishing they took naturally. The 
city-bred men were quick to observe and execute, and in fact caught 
up to cow-bows and Indians in a line of work to which they were 
hitherto ignorant, while the others had learned something akin to it 
on the plains in forays against depredators. 

Meanwhile horses were being purchased. Colonel Roosevelt was 
of opinion that the horses bought were scarcely heavy enough for 
the work in store for them, while nearly half of those obtained had 
never been broken. Therefore it was no easy task tO' handle them 
on picket lines and to provide for feeding and watering them, while 
the attempts to shoe and ride them were at first attended with con- 
siderable excitement. Many had come wild from the Western ranges, 
and these the men were compelled to throw down and tie before they 
could be shod. Many of the animals bucked or showed other tricks 
incident to their life on the ranches. But the regiment had any 
number of men so used to that sort of thing that they were undis- 
turbed in the slightest degree by any antic in which a horse might in- 
dulge, so the animals were brought into subjection, though many of 



214 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



them remained to the end such as an ordinary rider might find some 
difficiiky in mounting. Colonel Roosevelt's own horses were bought 
for him by a Texas friend with whom he had hunted on the Nueces. 
The price paid was fifty dollars apiece, for fancy prices did not obtain; 
the animals were not specially showy or adapted to Park riding, but 
they were tough and hardy and very well answered the purposes of 
the man who was to use them and who was so used to horses that it 
was said of him that he could get more out of one of them than any 
other man would have attempted. When it came to mounted drill 
with the men and their horses novelty and excitement were not far 
off. Having already been well drilled on foot the men knew the 
simple movements to form any kind of line or column and they went 
through the manoeuvres with credit to themselves and those who had 
them in charge. While this drilling was going on, and amid all the 
arduous duties attendant on an undertaking as difficult as the getting 
ready a raw regiment for war, Colonel Wood was busy night and day 
in hastening the final details of equipment. The drilling of the men 
was turned over to Colonel Roosevelt. 

'To drill perfectly needs long practice, but to drill roughly is a 
thing very easy to learn indeed," he says. "We were not always right 
about our intervals, our lines were somewhat irregular, and our more 
difficult movements were executed at times in rather a haphazard 
way; but the essential commands and the essential movements 
we learned without any difficulty, and the men performed 
them with great dash. When we put the men on horseback 
there was of course trouble with the horses, but the horseman- 
ship of the riders (the Western men) was consummate. In 
fact, the men were immensely interested in making their horses per- 
form each evolution with the utmost speed and accuracy, and in 
forcing each unquiet, vicious brute to get into line, and stay in line, 
whether he would or not. The guidon bearers held their plunging 



MR. ROOSEVELT AS ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF THE NAVY 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



'217 



steeds true to the line no matter what they tried to do, and each wild 
rider brought his wilder horse into its proper place with a dash and 
ease which showed the natural cavalryman. In short, from the very 
beginning the horseback drills were good fun, and everyone enjoyed 
them. We marched out through the adjoining country tO' drill wher- 
ever we found open ground, practising all the different column forma- 
tions as we went. On the open ground we threw out the line to one 
side or the other, and in one position and the other, sometimes at 
the trot, sometimes at the gallop. As the men grew accustomed to 
the simple evolutions we tried them more and more in skirmish drills, 
practising them so that they might get accustomed to advance in 
open order and to skirmish in any country, while the horses were 
held in the rear." 

Thoroughness was the main thing in Colonel Roosevelt's drilling, 
as in every thing else that he undertook; tireless himself in what he 
did he may often have drilled his men till they were well tired out, 
but they accomplished what it was intended they should accomplish, 
and this was their meed of praise. 

The arms of the regiment were the regular cavalry carbine, and the 
revolver. Some of the men carried their favorite Winchester rifles, 
using the new model which took the cartridge prescribed by the 
government. Colonel Roosevelt considered it sheer waste of time to 
try to train his men in the use of the sabre, a weapon totally foreign 
to them. Then it turned out that the regiment was to be used not 
mounted at all, so that all these preparations on horseback came to 
nothing. This was a great disappointment to the men, for they 
thought they would go to Havana as cavalrymen. But disappoint- 
ment could not damp their ardor, and so they got into the fight the 
horses might go. In their slouch hats, blue flannel shirts, brown 
trousers, leggins and boots, with handkerchiefs knotted round their 
throats, the regiment looked precisely as a body of cow-boy cavalry 



218 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



men should look, and their easy swagger of walk and careless de- 
meanor, while it might suggest the plains, yet it also told of men not 
to be trifled with and men who if they got a chance would m.ake a 
record for themselves. Colonel Roosevelt was indefatigable, the 
same energy which had characterized him from the beginning of his 
career was his characteristic now. He had always looked after the 
men who were under him, the cow-boys on his ranch had become 
his friends, the policemen in Nev^' York were his friends, and his regi- 
ment had old friends in it while the newest recruits appealed to him 
as friends yet to be. But the impatience of the men grew; they 
wanted to get away, to fight in Havana where, report had it, they 
were needed. Then why could they not get off? It was unlike 
'Teddy" Roosevelt to dilly-dally, so the fault could not be his, and 
these eternal drills were not the cause of their staying in camp so far 
from the scene of action. The fault must be that of the government 
which was always slow, and AA^ashington was a place where red tape 
was of far more account than action. The impatience increased, and 
there would have been more than one outbreak but for Colonel 
Roosevelt, who tried to explain that patience was a form of endurance 
as much as a more positive form of that necessary virtue in affairs con- 
nected with government procedure, and that the government in this 
case was not to blame too much, for a regiment was not an easy thing 
to handle and that in time orders to move would come. And then 
one day he told the men that they were to go forward. The rejoicing 
was universal, and many who never returned hurrahed at the idea 
that at last they were to see Havana and strike a blow for their 
country. 



CHAPTER XI. 



From San Antonio— For Tampa— On the Way— Off to Cuba— On Landing at 
Capron — Colonel Roosevelt Charges — Incidents— Colonel Roosevelt in 
Daiquiri— On the March— 'Forward' —General Young's Fight— Rough Riders 
in Battle for the First tim^"Don't Swear, Shoot"— Death of Fish and 
Command— Army Food— Money for Food out of Colonel's Pocket — In 
Camp — Waiting for Santiago. 

THE journey by rail from San Antonio to Tampa, Florida, took 
four days. The men were hilariously joyful all the way and 
could not understand why ''Teddy" Roosevelt should read a 
book at every spare moment, just as though going to war was a usual 
thing with him. The Colonel might have answered that, while going 
to this sort of war was a novelty to him, yet he had engaged in many 
a battle of another sort with faulty politicians, grabbing ofhce-seekers, 
and the like, and that Spain would prove a better foe than corrupt 
men in office who were willing to wreck the name of their country in 
dishonorable conflict with the law, while Spain was a foe whose 
weapons might be met with weapons of the same kind by honest men. 

On Sunday, May 29th, the regiment of Rough Riders went from 
their hot, dusty camp to take the cars for Tampa, Fla. With the 
first three sections of troops went Colonel Wood. Colonel Roosevelt 
went with the remaining four. The railroad had scheduled a forty- 
eight hour trip, but the experience of the officers in loading the 
train told them that the schedule time would go for little — there 
were not proper facilities for getting the horses on and off the train, 
nor for feeding or watering them; while there was confusion and 
delay among the railway officials all along the line. Colonel Roose- 
velt's four sections went to the cars in the afternoon. Colonel Wood's 

three sections having taken the rest of the day in getting off. It was 

219 



220 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



quite dusk when Colonel Roosevelt's lines of dusty troops marched 
into the station yard. The men worked till past midnight before the 
horses and baggage were got on the train, and then they learned that 
the passenger cars had been delayed for some reason or other, and 
would not be on hand for hours. At dawn the passenger trains came 
up and one by one were fillled by the men till all were provided for, 
Colonel Roosevelt taking the last car. There were four days of hot 
and dusty travel. 

''Everywhere the people came out to greet us and cheer us. They 
brought us flowers, they brought us watermelons and other fruit, and 
sometimes jugs and pails of milk, all of which we greatly appreciated. 
We were travehng through a region where practically all the older 
men had served in the Confederate army, and where the younger 
men had all their lives long drunk in the endless tales told by their 
elders at home, at the cross-roads taver-ns and in the court-house 
squares about the cavalry of Forrest and Morgan and the infantry of 
Jackson and Hood. The blood of the old men stirred to the distant 
breath of battle; the blood of the young men leaped hot with eager 
desire to accompany us. The older women who remembered the 
dreadful misery of war, the misery that presses its iron weight most 
heavily on the wives and the little ones, looked sadly at us; but the 
young girls drove down in bevies, arrayed in all their finery, to wave 
flags in farewell to the troopers and to beg cartridges and buttons 
ds mementoes. Everywhere we saw the Stars and Stripes, and every- 
where we were told, half laughing, by grizzled ex-Confederates, that 
they had never dreamed in by-gone days of bitterness to greet the 
old flag as they now were greeting it, and to send their sons as they 
now were sending them to fight and die under it." 

It was all one country now; there was now only one flag and it had 
been threatened; there was now no "Jo^^^Y Reb," no "mudsill from 
the North," but only one brotherhood, one nation of Americans, and 
a foreign country had wronged and defied us. 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



221 



After four uncomfortable days the troops disembarked at Tampa. 
There was no one to meet them, to tell them where they were to go 
into camp; no one to issue food for the first twenty-four hours; the 
men had to buy rations out of their own pockets, and they seized any 
wagons that came to hand to take the spare baggage to the camping 
ground which they at last found had been allotted to them. Colonel 
Roosevelt did all he could to keep order, going about it like a 
veteran, as the men said; but it was only when the ground was 
reached that confusion was allayed. Tents were put up, pickets 
established, and the camp policed. However, they were to be but a 
few days at Tampa. Colonel Roosevelt was notified that the ex- 
pedition was to start for a destination, not divulged at the time; 
that the horses were to be left behind, and only eight troops of seventy 
men each taken. The sorrow of the men at leaving their horses was 
outweighed by the joy of getting near the scene of action. But it was 
hard work to select the men wdio wxre to stay. More than one man, 
ofiicer and private, burst into tears when he found he was not to go. 

Orders were received on the evening of June 7th that the selected 
troops forming the expedition were tO' start from Port Tampa, nine 
miles away, at daybreak the following morning. The transport was 
overloaded; the men w^ere packed in like sardines; the traveling 
rations issued to the men were insufficient, and the ''canned beef,'"^ 
which afterward caused so much trouble to the Department at AVash- 
ington, was much in evidence. But all things seemed of small im- 
portance to the men alongside the fact that they were really ofT and 
that they were the first expedition to go. Next morning came word 
that the order to sail had been countermanded. What this meant no 
one could understand at the time. It turned out afterwards that this 
was due to the blunder of a Navy ofhcer who mistook some of the 
vessels for the Spanish fleet, and by his report there was consterna- 
tion brought to Washington, until the matter was set to rights. 



222 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



Meanwhile the men packed in the troop-ships gasped in the great 
heat of Tampa harbor. 

At last, on the evening of June 13th, the Yucatan, with the Rough 
Riders on board, along with the other ships, received orders to start. 
Ship after ship weighed anchor and made for the distant mouth of the 
harbor. Flags flew, bands played cheerily, the troopers clustered 
in the rigging or swarming the decks cheered and shouted to those 
left behind and to the other men on the other ships. 

We were going at last! After the miserable wait, the heat, the bad 
food and the idleness we were on our way, and we might sing '''The 
Girl I Left Behind ]Me" above the din of the bands playing a Sousa 
March. It was glorious! It was a picnic! It was better than the 
plains or the counting-house; we were representing the Army; we 
were full-fledged soldiers now that we were off and could not be 
stopped till we were at the point for which we had longed ever since 
the organization of the regiment ! 

Sailing southward through the tropic seas toward the unknown! 
The Rough Riders were young, they were eager to come face to face 
with what lay hidden before them — wild for adventure where risk 
might be had, and gain for the risk. They wondered whether they 
were to attack Santiago or, Porto Rico. They lounged in groups 
telling stories of their past life, of mining camps, cattle ranges; stories 
of hunting bear and deer; stories of war trails against Indians; stories 
less beautiful of deeds of violence, of brawls in saloons where cheating 
gamblers met their death; stories of mining-camps, sad love-tales and 
tales of love that had been too merry. And at night, when their 
laughter shot across the iridescent water and the Southern Cross 
glowed in the heavens, war seemed as far off as ever. 

On the morning of June 22, landing was effected at Daiquiri, a 
village where there had been a railway and iron works. There was 
plenty of excitement in the landing. First of all the smaller war ves- 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



223 



sels shelled Daiquiri in order to dislodge any Spaniards who might be 
in the neighborhood. They also shelled other places along the coast 
to keep the enemy puzzled as to the intention of the ^'Americanos." 
Then the surf was very high and landing had its difficulties, and the 
task of getting men, ammunition and provisions ashore was not 
easy. Each man had to carry three days' rations and a hundred 
rounds of ammunition. The Rough Riders had twO' rapid-fire Colt 
automatic guns and a dynamite gun. There was considerable trouble 
in getting these ashore. Horses were being landed from another 
transport, together with the mules, by simply throwing them over- 
board and letting them swim ashore. Both of Colonel Wood's 
horses swam it; one of Colonel Roosevelt's was drowned, but the 
little Texan steed got a foothold and was saved. 

Late in the afternoon the men, with ammunition and provisions 
were on dry land and ready for the Spaniards. Camp was made on 
a dusty brush-covered flat, with a jungle on one side and a fetid pool 
of water on the other. General Lawtoii had taken the advance, and 
he at once established outposts and placed reconnoitering parties on 
the trails. 

The afternoon of the next day orders came to the Rough Riders 
to march. General Wheeler was as anxious as General Lawton to 
have first blood, and he wished to put the cavalry division to the 
front as soon as possible. The Spaniards had had a skirmish with 
some Cubans who had been repulsed. General Wheeler made a per- 
sonal reconnoissance and finding out where the enemy was he 
directed General Young to take the Rough Riders' brigade and move 
forward to strike him next morning. 

"It was mid-afternoon," says Colonel Roosevelt, ''and the Tropic 
sun was beating fiercely down when Colonel Wood started our 
regiment — the First and Tenth Cavalry and some of the infantry 
regiments having already marched. Colonel Wood himself rode in 



224 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



advance, while I led my squadron and Major Brodie followed with 
his. It was a hard march, the hilly jungle trail being so narrow that 
often we had to go in single file. We marched fast, for Wood w^as 
bO'Und to get us ahead of the other regiments so as to be sure of 
our place in the body that struck the enemy next morning." 

The men were not in the best of shape, the majority of them being 
cow-boys who had never done much walking. It was intensely hot 
and the men carried heavy burdens. Whenever a halt was called 
these burdens were tossed aside and the men threw themselves on 
their backs. Night had long since fallen when the troopers tramped 
into Siboney. Camp was made for the night. Thunder was rolling 
in the sky, and soon there came a downpour of rain and put out the 
camp fires. In an hour the rain was over, and the fires were relighted 
and helped to dry the soaked garments of the troopers. 

"Wood had gone off to see General Young, as General WHieeler 
had instructed General Young to hit the Spaniards, who were four 
miles away, as soon after daybreak as possible. Meanwhile I strolled 
over to Captain Capron's troop. He and I, with his two Heutenants, 
Day and Thomas, stood around the fire together with two or three 
non-commissioned officers and privates. Among the latter were 
Serjeant Hamilton Fish and Trooper Elliot Cowdin, both of New 
York. Cowdin, together with two other troopers, Harry Thorpe 
and iMunro Ferguson, had been on my Oyster Bay Polo Team some 
years before. Hamilton Fish had already shown himself one of the 
best non-commissioned officers we had. A huge fellow, of enormous 
strength and endurance and dauntless courage, he took naturally to 
a soldier's life. He never complained and never shirked any duty 
of any kind, while his power over his men was great. So good a 
sergeant had he made that Captain Capron, keen to get the best men 
under him, took him when he left Tampa — for Fish's troop remained 
behind. As we stood around the flickering blaze that night I caught 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 227 

myself admiring the splendid bodily vigor of Capron and Fish — the 
Captain and the Sergeant. Their frames seemed of steel, to with- 
stand all fatigue; they were flushed with health; in their eyes shone 
fiery resolve and high desire. Two finer types of the fighting man, 
two better representatives of the American soldier there were not 
in the whole army. Capron was going over his plans for the fight, 
when we should meet the Spaniards, Fish occasionally asking a 
question. They were both filled with eager longing to show their 
mettle, and both were rightfully confident that if they lived they 
w^ould win honorable renown and would rise high in their chosen 
profession. Within twelve hours they both were dead." 

Toward midnight Colonel Wood returned. The troopers were to 
start by sunrise toward Santiago. General Young had got from 
General Castillo a description of the country front. General Castillo, 
commander of the Cuban forces, had promised Young the assistance 
of eight hundred Cubans. But the Cubans had been beaten back by 
the Spaniards the day before and could not give the promised aid 
when Wood made his reconnoissance to find out the extent of the 
Spanish strength. 

General Young with a squadron of the First Regular Cavalry, 
Major Bell commanding, and a squadron of the Tenth Regulars 
under Major Alorrell, with two Hotchkiss mountain guns under 
Captain Watson of the Tenth, started before six in the morning with 
Captain A. L. Mills as aide. At half-past seven Captain Tvlills, with 
a patrol of two men, discovered the Spaniards near where two roads 
came together, in pits and in the jungle, and on a big ranch. Wlien 
General Young struck them they were on a ridge a little to his left 
front, the ridge separated by a wide ravine down which the Rough 
Riders were then advancing. General Young did not attack at once; 
he knew Colonel Wood had a difficult route and would need a longer 
time to reach the position. General W^heeler, arriving and being 



228 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



informed of the plan of attack, approved it, leaving General Young 
a free hand to fight the battle. About eight o'clock Young opened 
his Hotchkiss gun on the enemy. The Spaniards retorted with vol- 
leys. They had a couple of light guns which the Americans thought 
w^ere quick-firers. The heaviness of the jungle and the Spaniards' use 
of smokeless powder made it difficult to locate them, and Young 
began to push forward. His men were on both sides of the road and 
in such dense jungle that only in places could they see ahead, and 
some confusion ensued, the support after awhile getting mixed with 
the advance. Captain Beck took A troop of the Tenth to the left, 
next to Captain Galbraith's troop. Two other troops of the Tenth 
were to the right. Wire fences ran through the jungle and when the 
troops reached the ridge they came upon precipitous heights. They 
were led gallantly. The advance was pushed forward until the voices 
of the enemy could be heard in the entrenchments. The Spanish 
kept up a heavy firing, but in spite of disaster the Americans climbed 
the ridges and the Spaniards broke and fled. 

Meanwhile, Colonel Roosevelt and his men began their advance 
at six o'clock. A great many of the men were footsore and weary 
from their march of the day before, and as they found the pace up the 
hill too hard they fell out of line so that the Rough Riders went into 
action with less than five hundred men; for in addition to those who 
had dropped out a detachment had been left to guard the baggage. 
The Colt gun was transported by a couple of mules which Lieutenant 
Tiffany had corralled. The dynamite gun was not along, no mules 
being obtained in time. 

Capron's Troop was in the lead. Four men headed by Sergeant 
Fish went first, supported by twenty men some distance behind. 
Then came Capron and the rest of his troop, closely followed by 
General Wood with whom General Young had sent two aides, Lieu- 
tenants Smedburg and Rivers. 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



229 



Colonel Roosevelt rode behind at the head of the other three 
troops of his squadron, and then came Brodie at the head of his squad- 
ron. The men had to march single file in the narrow trail for the 
most part, and the tangled jungle that bordered it made it next to 
impossible for a man to force his way. A Cuban guide who had 
headed the column ran away almost as soon as the fighting began 
At the top of the hill the walking was pleasanter. After marching 
for over an hour there was a halt, and Colonel Wood sent word down 
the line that the advance guard had come across a Spanish outpost. In 
another minute Colonel Wood sent word to Colonel Roosevelt to 
deploy three troops to the right of the trail and to advance. Then 
came the crash — the Guasimas fight was on, and the Rough Riders 
received their baptism of blood, and it was a furious one. 

''Don't swear, shoot!" Colonel Wood said, when some of the men 
cursed. 

"The Spanish outposts were very near our advance guard, and 
some minutes of the hottest kind of firing followed before they were 
driven back and slipped off through the jungle to their main lines 
in the rear. Here, at the very outset of our active service we suffered 
the loss of two as gallant men as ever wore uniform — Sergeant Hamil- 
ton Fish, at the extreme front, while holding the point up to its work 
and firing back where the Spanish advance guards lay, was shot and 
instantly killed; three of the men with him were likewise hit; Captain 
Capron, leading the advance guard in person, and displaying equal 
courage and coolness in the way he handled them, was also struck 
and died a few minutes afterward. * >k Very soon after I 
reached the front Brodie was hit, the bullet shattering one arm and 
whirHng him around as he stood. * * * Thereupon, Wood di- 
rected me to take charge of the left wing in Brodie's place and to 
bring it forward, so over I went." 



230 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



A rain of bullets fell around him. He caught a glimpse of some 
Spaniards, apparently retreating, and his men fired a couple of rounds 
after them. Then he saw that his men were being fired at from 
some large red-tiled buildings, part of a ranch in front, but smoke- 
less powder and the thick cover in front were puzzling. Colonel 
Roosevelt took a rifle from a wounded man and began firing. Ad- 
vancing, the cover got thicker and he and his men lost touch of the 
main army under Wood. He halted his men, and they fired industri- 
ously at the ranch building ahead. Hearing cheering on the right 
Colonel Roosevelt supposed that it meant a charge on the part of 
Wood's men, so he sprang up and ordered his men to rush the 
building ahead of them. There was a rush, a moment's heavy firing 
from the Spaniards that did no damage, and then, all was quiet. 
When the Rough Riders arrived at the buildings they found nothing 
but heaps of empty cartridge shells and two dead Spaniards, shot 
through the head. 

The firing was mute, ''but I was still entirely uncertain as to what 
had exactly happened. I did not know whether the enemy had been 
driven back or whether it was merely a lull in the fight, and we might 
be attacked again. * * * ^l^is moment one of our men whO' 
had dropped out arrived with "the information (fortunately false) that 
Wood was dead. Of course this meant that the command devolved 
on me, and I hastily set about taking charge of the regiment. I had 
been particularly struck by the coolness and courage of Sergeants 
Dame and Mcllhenny, and sent them out with small pickets tO' keep 
watch in front and to the left of the left wing." 

After making other arrangements for protection of his men, 
Colonel Roosevelt started over to the main body, and there he met 
Colonel Wood, alive and well. Fighting had been fierce all along 
the lines, and victory had crowned the efforts of the men. 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



231 



The Rough Riders lost eight men killed and thirty-four wounded. 

There had been a good deal of question in the press of the country 
as to how the Rough Riders and the Tenth Cavalry, who were 
colored men, would behave in battle. ''So there was a tendency," 
says Colonel Roosevelt, modestly, ''tO' exalt our deeds at the expense 
of those of the First Regulars whose courage and good conduct were 
taken for granted." 

But the people at large were to reckon at their full value the deeds 
of the regim.ent so variously made up of men in different stations of 
life, and their opinion was that a good showing had been made. 

That afternoon the wounded were looked after. Those who could 
walk had gone to the small field hospital of the regiment, which was 
set up on the trail. All the dead and badly wounded were found. A 
Cherokee halfbreed was one of the first men who fired and he dis- 
played conspicuous bravery. He was hit seven times, and had to be 
sent back to the States. Another of those marked by gallantry was 
Elliot Cowdin, who has been mentioned before. These men of the 
plains were by their training philosophic as regarded life and death. 
Colonel Roosevelt mentions a cow-puncher who, after the fight, re- 
marked, "Well, some of the boys got it in the neck." To which 
another replied, "Many a good horse dies." 

Another halfbreed Cherokee was wx)unded no less than seven 
times. Up to the last wound he refused to leave the firing line. The 
Rough Riders had the stuff in them of which heroes are made, and 
they took it as a matter of course that if they were wounded it was 
nothing much to speak of; if they were wounded unto death it was 
about the same, for death had tO' come sometime and in some shape 
or form.. 

Colonel Roosevelt cites an incident as happening in the field 
hospital where the wounded in the fight were lying. The injured 
men made no complaint — did not groan. Suddenly one of them 



232 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



began to hum "^,ly Country, 'tis of Thee." One by one the others 
joined in the chorus,, and the song swelled out in the woods and was 
echoed and carried far away. If there was any panic in their bosoms 
during the fight the men did not show it, and they took the results of 
the scrimmage stolidly, while they were anxious for another engage- 
ment. Indeed, it would have been difficult to get rid of them once 
they entered the regiment. An instance is given of one of the men 
wounded at Siboney. The doctors decided that his injuries were of 
such a nature that he should be sent home. That night the man dis- 
appeared, slipping out of the window of the hospital and coming into 
camp with his rifle and accoutrements, though the wound he had 
received must have made walking very painful. The men, his com- 
panions, thereafter decided that he had the right to stay in the regi- 
ment, which he did, and he distinguished himself at the fight at San 
Juan. 

The morning after the fight the seven dead Rougb'^Riders were 
buried, their companions standing around with bared heads, singing 
"Rock of Ages." 

On the 25th the regiment moved on a couple of miles, and camped 
in an open, marshy spot. General Young was attacked by fever, and 
Colonel \\'ood took charge of the brigade. This left Colonel Roose- 
velt in command of the regiment. He and the men knew one another 
by this time, and he felt that he was able to make them do their best 
in march or battle. They were fully aware that he paid no attention 
to their past, nor what was their creed, politics or social standing; 
that all he desired was their duty to the assumed office of soldier. 
Though he demanded the highest performance of that duty, and that 
they knew it was enough for him, he knew their courage, hardihood 
and obedience. 

Colonel Roosevelt had his own troubles. There were not enough 
transportation wagons or mule trains, as there had not been a suffi- 
cient number of landing boats with the transports; while the shelter 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



233 



tents were a poor protection against the heavy rains that came down 
nearly every afternoon and converted the camp streets into quag- 
mires. Then the food was not sufficient nor good, and ''fitter for the 
Klondyke than for Cuba." Enough salt pork and hardtack were to. 
be had, but not enough coffee and sugar. 

Colonel Roosevelt organized expeditions back to the sea coast, 
selecting the best walkers, along with some of the horses of the 
officers and stray mules. These expeditions brought back canned 
tomatoes and beans. But these were not had without great exertion 
on the part of the Colonel, while Colonel Weston, of the Commis- 
sary Department, aided him as much as possible. A regulation made 
it imperative that canned vegetables should be purchased only for the 
use of officers, but Colonel Roosevelt got around this little rule by 
buying the things for the men from his own pocket. Is it any wonder 
that the men respected him for his care and thought of them? 

On one of the trips after provisions Colonel Roosevelt took with 
him a man who had formerly been deputy-marshal of Cripple Creek, 
and a Wells-Fargo Express rider. In coming back with his loadj 
through a terrific storm, this man, Sherman Bell, slipped and opened, 
an old rupture from which he had suft'ered for years. The agony he 
endured must have been excruciating, though he managed to crawl 
back to camp. There the doctor told him he would have to be sent 
back to the States when an ambulance came along. The ambulance 
came next day, which happened to be the day before the regiment 
marched to San Juan. Tt was after nightfall when the wheels were 
heard on the road. Bell crawled out of the hospital tent where he 
had been lying and finding the jungle hid there all the long night 
through. The ambulance had to go on its way without him.His 
friends in the regiment shielded him from detection, and carried to 
him his gun, belt and bedding. Bell kept out of sight until the 
column started, and then staggered along behind it. 



234 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



Colonel Roosevelt found him the morning of the fight of San Juan. 
Bell told him that he Vv anted to die fighting, if he must die, and the 
Colonel had not the heart to send him back. Splendid was the service 
the man did that day, and afterward in the trenches, and though his 
wound opened twice and each time he was at the point of death, Bell 
escaped death and went back with the regiment to the United States. 

The Rough Riders to a man stood by their Colonel. It would not 
have been well for that man who said a word disparaging to ''Teddy," 
as they called him. The plainsman saw in his leader a man who knew 
the plains as well as he did himself; who could round up cattle, stalk 
deer, hunt buffalo and take his chances with hostile Indians. They 
of less firm mould, the college men, the club man, the bank clerk, 
saw in him a man who had studied; who knew polite life; who in poli- 
tics had advocated the sound monetary system that makes for success 
in business. Though in the East disparaging remarks were made re- 
garding the Rough Riders and their leader, again floated the accusa- 
tion of ''playing to the galleries," while some in Washington dis- 
paraged him for his anger over canned beef and the short supplies of 
the men, and remembered against him certain times when he had 
braved criticism in placing the blame where it deserved among men 
high in office, and who were not used to have their acts scanned. The 
politicians who had not profited by his adherence to the reform move- 
ment sneered and jeered and had a clever-sized crow to pick with the 
man who called by the ugly name of corruption those little acts 
against the lawbreakers in saloons and resorts of disorderliness which 
placed in their pockets the wherewithal to live sumptuously every 
day. Certain newspapers took it up and discounted the Rough 
Riders as a regiment composed of the offscourings of the Territories, 
and w^ondered in print what law of amalgamation brought the riff- 
raff of the plains so near to the heart and mind of the man who was 
to lead them into battle against the oppressors of Cuba. 



COI^ONEIv WOOD AND LIEUT. COLONED ROOSEVEET 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



237 



But in the marshy camp in the sultry land another story was told. 
The men there saw a resolute, astute man thinking of their comfort 
and well-being; sympathizing with them; understanding them and 
helping them out of many a snarl; not too hard with them; so that 
there was no dereliction of the duty they had promised to do, and 
overlooking many a fault that, while grave, w^as not the outcome of 
a bad heart or%n unjust mind. 

The Rough Riders knew their Colonel very well, and as he passed 
among them they seldom saw on his face the scowl or the exag- 
gerated smile which became the characteristic of the comic papers. 
These same comic papers did not see Colonel Roosevelt in Cuba, 
where so much depended upon him; where the care of his men 
abided with him; where he planned to provide for them what he 
considered the necessities of the soldiers' life, and which the Govern- 
ment officers at Washington considered only suitable for the fare of 
the ofiicers. The face of Colonel Roosevelt was never stern nor 
lowering to his men in Cuba unless there was a flagrant violation of 
military discipline. At such a time, the men could readily believe the 
stories detailed by those troopers from New York to the effect that 
Police Commissioner Roosevelt had been hated by the roundsmen 
who connived at blackmail and by the politicians who conducted the 
elections in a manner to suit themselves. The future had its tale to 
tell as well as the past, and that future lay in abeyance down there in 
Cuba where the Colonel, leading his troops into action, might yet be 
pierced by a Mauser bullet. 

The day before San Juan, the army was camped along the valley 
waiting anxiously for the morrow. Outposts were being established 
on each side of the valley. From the generals down to the privates 
every one was eager to march against Santiago, where surely there 
would be plenty of fighting. Rest v/as necessary now, for to-morrow 
or next day might require all the strength that could be mustered. 



238 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



The soldiers slept, the brilliant Southern stars looking down upon 
their bronzed faces, which might be stilled to-morrow night in 
another sleep! The sentries paced their rounds; the relief came and 
went, and the men slept and dreamed, maybe of homes far aw^ay, 
maybe of battles won. The hours crept on; the East became a bloom 
of light; the stars began to fade, and night was gone. 

At daybreak when the long-leaved palms began td^show through 
the rising mist the cavalr}^ trumpets blared out another day had 
come. But orders did not arrive as soon as was hoped and expected. 
The Rough Riders were restless; they disliked idleness, and there was 
no place here in which to be idle with any sort of excitement. They 
hoped there was not to be a repetition of the tactics which had kept 
them so long from embarkation after they were ready for Cuba; 
for now that they were in Cuba they w^anted to have a trial at 
Santiago. 



CHAPTER XII. 



On to Santiago — El Poso Hill — General Wheeler — El Caney — Through the 
Lane — Kettle Hill — A Ruse to get to the Front — The Colored Troops — The 
Catlings — In Charge of Parts of Six Regiments — Taking the Trenches — 
Sau Juan Hill Taken — Only Forward Movement of the Spanish — Acts of Gal- 
lantry — Digging Trenches — Opposing Forces — Waiting to Take Santiago. 

ORDERS were received June 30th for the regiment to hold 
itself in readiness to march against Santiago. The men 
were overjoyed. The road beside the camp was crowded 
with marching men already going forward when the Rough Riders 
struck camp and drew up in the rear of the first Cavalry. 

The heat v/as intense and there was little or no shade except from 
the jungle, whose density made the air stifling. It was eight o'clock 
in the evening when the regiment climbed El Poso hill. Here 
General Wood was making preparations for the encampment of the 
brigade. The arrangements for the night on the part of the Rough 
Riders were simple. Each troop extended across the road into the 
jungle and the men, throwing down their belongings, slept on their 
arms. Next morning there was an early and scant breakfast, and 
there vvas hope that the day would bring some fighting. 

General Wheeler was sick, but pluckily kept to the front. He was 
unable to retain control of the cavalry division, which then devolved 
on General Samuel Sumner, who commanded it till the middle of 
the afternoon, when most of the fighting was over. General Sum- 
ner's own brigade fell to Colonel Henry Carroll. 

It was about six o'clock in the sultry morning that the first report 
of cannon from El Caney came booming across the miles of jungle. 
The American guns opened immediately. For a minute afterwards 

289 



24^ 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



1 



no response came. General Wood remarked to Colonel Roosevelt 
that he wished their brigade could be moved to a more secure 
position, for it was directly in line of any fire aimed by the Spaniards 
at the battery. He had hardly spoken when there was a whistling 
in the air, and a Spanish shrapnel exploded over their heads. The 
officers sprang to their feet and leaped on their horses. A second 
shot came, and a third. A shell exploded among the Cubans, killing 
and wounding many. General Wood's led-horse was also shot 
down. 

Colonel Roosevelt got his men over the crest of the hill into the 
thick underbrush. Then General Wood formed his brigade, with the 
Rough Riders in front, ordering Colonel Roosevelt to follow behind 
the First Brigade. No reconnoisance had been made, and the exact 
position and strength of the Spaniards was unknown. Colonel 
Roosevelt was next ordered to cross the ford, march half a mile to 
the right and then halt and await further orders. 

As he led his column along through the high jungle grass the First 
Brigade was to the left of the Rough Riders and the firing between 
it and the Spaniards steadily increased. In a little while the Riders 
came to a sunken lane, and as the First Brigade was then engaged in 
a stand-up fight. Colonel Roosevelt halted his men and sent back 
word for orders. 

''The sunken lane, which had a wire fence on either side, led 
straight up toward and between the two hills in our front, the hill on 
the left which contained heavy block houses being farther away from 
us than the hill oii our right, which we afterward grew to call Kettle 
Hill, and which was surmounted merely by some ranch buildings 
and haciendas with sunken brick-lined walls and cellars. I got the 
men as well sheltered as I could. Many of them lay close under the 
bank of the lane, others slipped into the San Juan River and crouched 
under its hither bank, while the rest lay down behind the patches of 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 241 

bushy jungle in the tall grass. The heat was intense, and many of 
the men were already showing signs of exhaustion. The sides of the 
hills in front were bare, but the country up to them was for the most 
part covered with such dense jungle that in charging through it no 
accuracy of formation could possibly be preserved." 

Fighting was on in earnest now, the enemy on the hills sending out 
heavy volley firing. Colonel Roosevelt sent messenger after mes- 
senger to try to find General Sumner or General Wood to get per- 
mission to advance, and was just abo^ut making a forward movement 
when the command came ''to move forward and support the regulars 
in the assault on the hills in front." 

Immediately the troopers were in motion. Guerrillas had been 
shooting at the men from the edges of the jungle and from their 
perches in the trees, and as they used smokeless powder to carry their 
Mauser bullets, it was next to impossible to lo»cate them. The men 
had also suffered from the hill on the right front where guerrillas and 
Spanish regulars were firing. Colonel Roosevelt formed his men in 
column of troops, each troop extending in open skirminishing order. 
The Ninth Regiment and the First went up Kettle Hill with the 
Rough Riders. General Sumner gave the Tenth the order to charge 
the hills, and the three regiments went forward, keeping up a heavy 
fire. 

"I spoke to the captain in command of the rear platoons, saying 
that I had been ordered to support the regulars in the attack upon 
the hills, and that in my judgment we could not take these hills by 
firing on them, and that we must rush them. He answered that his 
orders were to keep his men lying where they were, and that he could 
not charge without orders. I asked where the Colonel was, and as 
he was not in sight, said, Then I am the ranking office here, and I 
give the order to charge' — for I did not want to keep the men longer 
in the open suffering under a fire which they could not effectively 



242 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



return. Naturally, the Captain hesitated to obey this order when no 
word had been received from his own Colonel. So I said, 'Then let 
my men through, Sir,' and rode on through the lines, followed by the 
grinning Rough Riders. * ^ When we started to go through, 
however, it proved too much for the regulars, and they jumped up 
and came along, their officers and troops mingling with mine, all 
being delighted at the chance. When I got to where the left wing 
of the Ninth was lying, through the courtesy of Lieutenant Hartwick, 
two of whose colored troopers threw down the fence, I was enabled 
to get back into the lane, at the same time waving my hat and giving 
the order to charge the hill on our right front. Out of my sight, over 
on the right. Captains McBlain and Taylor made up> their minds 
independently to charge at just about this time, and at almost the 
same moment Colonels Carroll and Hamilton who were off, I believe, 
to my left, wdiere we could see neither them nor their men, gave the 
order to advance. But of all this I knev/ nothing at the time. The 
whole line, tired of waiting and eager to close with the enemy, was 
straining to go forw^ard, and it seems that different parts slipped the 
leash almost at the same moment." 

The First, Ninth, Third, Sixth and Tenth Cavalry were all repre- 
sented in this rush. As soon as Colonel Roosevelt saw that his men 
were well started he galloped back to help Goodrich get his men 
across the road so as to make an attack on that side. Captain Mills 
had throwm three of the other troops across the road for the same 
purpose. Colonel Roosevelt then wheeled around and once more 
galloped toward the hill, passing by the shouting, cheering, fighting 
men, and got abreast of the ranch buildings on the top of Kettle 
Hill. Some yards from the top his horse ran into a wire fence, when 
he jumped to the ground and turned ''Little Texas," the horse, 
loose, and ran up the hill. The hill was at once covered by the troops, 
Rough Riders, colored troops of the Ninth, men of the First. 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



243 



Then the Spaniards, from the line of hills in front where they were 
heavily intrenched, opened fire with cannon and rifles. On the top 
of the hill was a great iron kettle which had probably been used in 
the process of refining sugar, and behind it several men took shelter 
— this kettle which was to give its name to the hill. The infantry of 
Kent, led by Hawkins, were climbing the hill in the charge on the 
San Juan block-house, and they needed help. Colonel Roosevelt got 
the men together and started volley firing against the Spaniards in 
the block-house and in the trenches around it. 

All at once above the cracking of the carbines came a strange 
drumming sound, and some of the men cried out that it was the 
Spanish machine guns. 

''Listening, I made out that it came from the flat ground to the 
left, and jumped to my feet, smiting my hand on my thigh, and shout- 
ing aloud with exultation, Tt's the Catlings, men, our Catlings.' " 
Lieutenant Parker was indeed bringing his four Catling guns into 
action and getting them nearer and nearer to the front. Then the 
infantry moved nearer and nearer the crest of the hill. 

''At last we could see the Spaniards running from the rifle pits as 
the Americans came on in the final rush." Helter-skelter, shouting, 
cheering went the men, until they were stopped by Colonel Roose- 
velt who feared they would injure their comrades. He "called to 
them to charge the next line of trenches on the hills in our front from 
which we had been undergoing a good deal of punishment. Think- 
ing that the men would all come I jumped over the wire fence in front 
of us and started at the double; but as a matter of fact the troopers 
were so excited, what with shooting and being shot, and shouting 
and cheering, that they did not hear, or did not heed me; and after 
running about a hundred yards I found I had only five men along 
with me. Bullets were ripping the grass all around us and one of 
the men was mortally wounded ; another was first shot in the leg and 



244 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



then through the body. >k ^ * There was no use going on with 
the remaining three men, and I bade them stay where they were while 
I went back and brought up the rest of the brigade. This was a 
decidedly cool request, for there was no possible point in letting them 
stay there while I went back, but at the moment it seemed perfectly 
natural to me and apparently so to them, for they cheerfully nodded 
and sat down in the grass, firing back at the line of trenches from 
which the Spaniards were shooting at them. jMeanwhile, I ran back, 
jumped over the v;ire fence, and went over the crest of the hill, filled 
with anger against the troopers, and especially those of my own regi- 
ment, for not having accompanied me. They of course were quite 
innocent of wrongdoing, and even while I taunted them bitterly for 
not having followed me it was all I could do not to smile at the look 
of injury and surprise that came over their faces, while they cried out, 
'AVe didn't leave you; we didn't see you go, Colonel. Lead on, now, 
we'll surely follow you.' " 

Colonel Roosevelt wanted other regiments to go, so he ran to 
w'here Colonel Sumner was and asked permission to make the charge. 
Sumner told him to go. Then the regiments went with a rush, fol- 
lowing the Colonel, who wanted to make the charge — whooping, 
yelling, wild as boys out for a lark. Away they went across the wide 
valley that lay between them and the Spanish intrenchments. The 
Spanish saw the vortex swooping down upon them, and ran, except 
for a scattered few who either surrendered or were shot down. When 
the men reached the trenches they found them filled with the dead 
bodies of Spanish regulars. 

As the Colonel was running up at the double two Spaniards leaped 
from the trenches ten yards away and fired at him. He killed one of 
them with his revolver, missing the other. 

There was now m.uch confusion, the regiments completely inter- 
mingled, and the men were still under a heavy fire. Colonel Roose- 
velt got a mixed lot of men together and pushed on from the trenches 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



247 



and ranch houses which had now been taken, and drove the Spaniards 
through a Hne of palm trees and over the crest of a chain of hills, 
wdiich, when the Americans reached, they found to overlook 
Santiago. 

While the Colonel was reforming the troops on this chain of hills 
an aide from General Sumner rode up with orders to advance no' 
farther, and to hold the hill at all risks. Colonel Roosevelt now had 
under him parts of six cavalry regiments v/hich were at the extreme 
front, being the highest officer left there. He was the immediate 
commander of them for the remainder of the afternoon and night. 
Throughout his narrative of the stirring events of the campaign in 
Cuba Colonel Roosevelt is singularly reticent in placing himself 
forward in any of the fights that took place. It is only here and 
there that the first personal pronoun creeps in, and then only in 
conjunction with a detailing of the prowess of his regiment, except 
where the story must halt for more explicit description. He 
speaks little of his bravery, of the personal risks he ran, of his own 
privations and dangers; it is always his men — proud of them, exulting 
in their spirit and dash, never slow to give the credit where it is 
due and always anxious to award praise equally to other regiments 
besides his own. Much of what occurred during the memorable 
months in Cuba is detailed in Colonel Roosevelt's writing commemo- 
rative of it, and in every instance he singles out the men by name 
who did deeds of valor and were callous to danger when in action. 
Loving a brave man, he finds hundreds of instances in the campaign 
which drew him near to the men in the army and in simple language 
he extols them. 

After the trenches had been taken and orders given by General 
Sumner for the victors to halt and hold the hill, the artillery made 
more than one effort to go into action on the firing line, but the black 
powder used rendered the attempts of no avail. Smokeless powder 



248 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



being used by the Spanish guns it ^vas difficult to place them. The 
men got no appreciable help from our guns on July ist. The soldiers 
were quick to realize the defects of the iVmerican artillery, but they 
were philosophic about it, not shoAving any concern at its failure; 
whenever they heard the artillery open they Avould grin and say, 
'There go the guns again: Avonder hoAv soon they Avill be shut up," 
and they usually AA'ere shut up. 

"On the hill slope immediately around me I had a mixed force 
composed of mem.bers of most of the cavalry regiments and a few 
infantrymen. There Avere about fifty of my Rough Riders, Avith 
Lieutenants Goodrich and Carr. Among the rest Avere perhaps a 
score of colored infantrymen, but, as it happened at this particular 
point, Avithout any of their officers. Xo troops could haA'e behaved 
better than the colored soldiers had behaved so far; but they are, of 
course, peculiarly dependent upon their Avhite officers. Occasion- 
all}' they produce non-commissioned officers Avho can take the initia- 
tive and accept responsibility precisely like the best class of whites, 
but this cannot be expected normally, nor is it fair to expect it. 
With the colored troops there should ahvays be some of their oaa^h 
officers; Avhereas, Avith the Avhite regulars, as Avith my OAvn Rough 
Riders, experience shoAved that the non-commissioned officers could 
usually carry on the fight by .themselves if they were once started, 
no m^atter Avhether their officers Avere killed or not." 

This praise of the colored men came more than once from Colonel 
Roosevelt. The future of the race appealed to him, and in positions 
Avhere he could see many of them he had ahvays found that they Avere 
not lacking in those essentials that go to the making of good citizens 
and as good soldiers. As in the CiA'il War it could now be said that 
"'the colored troops fought bravely." 

At this particular time it Avas most trying for the men. They 
were lying flat on their faces — bullets, shells and shrapnel Avere SAveep- 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



249 



ing over the hilltop and carrying death in their wake. One of the 
best of the Rough Riders, Sergeant Greenly, of Arizona, who was 
lying close to Colonel Roosevelt, said suddenly, "Beg pardon, 
Colonel, but I've been hit in the leg." One of his comrades helped 
to fix his leg temporarily, and he limped to the rear, cool and col- 
lected, yet suftering from a bad wound. 

The white regulars and the Rough Riders showed no signs of 
weakening under the galling conditions, but under the terrible strain 
the colored infantrymen, who had none of their officers with them to 
keep them up, grew a little uneasy, and some of them drifted to the 
rear, either helping wounded men or trying to find their own regi- 
ments. This Colonel Roosevelt could not allow, for by their leaving 
his line was weakened; so he got to his feet and went a few yards in 
the rear, drawing his revolver. There he halted the retreating men 
and told them in his quick way that while he appreciated the work 
they had done, admired the gallantry they had hitherto displayed 
and would be sorry to hurt any of them, yet he would shoot down 
the first man who, no matter what the reason, went to the rear. The 
Colonel's own men here sat up and watched the proceedings with 
interest to see what would be the outcome. The Colonel ended his 
little talk to the colored men by saying: "Now I shall be very sorr}^ 
to hurt you, and you don't know whether or not I will keep my word, 
but my men can tell you that I always do," and the cow-punchers, 
miners, and hunters nodded their heads solemnly and sang out in 
chorus, as though they were in a comic opera, "He always does, he 
always does." 

The Spaniards called the colored soldiers "smoked Yankees," and 
now they showed their white teeth as they broke into grins, and 
there was no further going to the rear, for they seemed to accept 
the Colonel as one of their own officers at once. Other colored 
soldiers had already so accepted Colonel Roosevelt, the cavalrymen, 



250 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT, 



and in return the Rough Riders, although mostly Southerners who 
might be supposed to have race prejudice,, grew to fraternizing with 
them as comrades and were willing, as they put it, ''to drink out of 
the same canteen" with them. During the afternoon the Spaniards * 
in the front of the waiting men "made the only offensive movement 
which I saw them make during the entire campaign; for what were 
ordinarily called 'attacks' upon our lines consisted merely of heavy 
firing from their trenches and from their skirmishers. In this case 
they did actually begin to make a forward movement, their cavalry 
coming up as well as the marines and reserve infantry, while their 
skirmdshers, who were always bold, redoubled their activity. It could 
not be called a charge, and not only was it not pushed home, but it 
was stopped almost as soon as it began, our men immediately run- 
ning forAvard to the crest of the hill with shouts of delight at seeing 
their enemies at last come into the open. A few seconds' firing 
stopped their advance and drove them into the cover of the trenches.'' 
This was the one attempt to retake San Juan, and it proved a 
failure. The Spanish kept up a heavy fire for some time longer, 
though, and the Americans found it necessary to lie down again, 
only occasionally replying to the fire. All at once there came on the 
right the peculiar drumming sound vdiich had sounded so welcome 
in the morning when the infantry were attacking the San Juan block- 
house. The men did not now think it the Spaniard machine gun. but 
knew it to be their own Gatlings which were up again and coming 
to the fight. They sat up and listened; they heard the musical drum- 
ming and kncAv that the enemy Avere in for it noAv. Colonel Roose- 
velt started over to inquire as to the state of aft'airs. and discovered 
that Lieutenant Parker, not content Avith using his guns in support- 
ing the attacking forces, had had them shoved forAvard to the ex- 
treme front of the fighting line Avhere he Avas handling them Avith 
telling eft'ect on the Spaniards. From this time ouAvard the Gatlings 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



251 



were on the right of Colonel Roosevelt's regiment, and Parker's men 
fraternized with the Rough Riders in every way. Until the last 
Spanish shot was fired those tantalizing drummers of Catlings were 
kept at the extreme front and were used on every occasion and most 
worthily. In truth, one of the most striking features of the campaign 
was the dash and efficiency with which the Catlings were handled by 
Parker, who showed that a first-class officer could use machine guns 
on wheels in battle and skirmish, in attacking and defending trenches, 
alongside of the best troops and to their great advantage. These 
are Colonel Roosevelt's words and he has always had the most sincere 
appreciation of Lieutenant Parker and his guns at San Juan hill. 

''AH day the din of battle kept up, the heat, the dust, the con- 
fusion; and night came down, beautiful and calm, with stars and 
soft airs, and only then did the firing gradually die away. However, 
before this occurred Captain Morton and Captain -Boughton, of the 
Third Cavalry, came over and told Colonel Roosevelt that there was 
a rumor afloat to the effect that there was some talk of retiring. To 
this they wished to enter a protest in the most resolute manner. 

"I had been watching them both as they handled their troops with 
the cool confidence of the veteran regular officer, and had been con- 
gratulating myself that they were oft' toward the right flank, for as 
long as I knew they were there I knew I was perfectly safe in that 
direction. I had heard no rumor about retiring and I cordially agreed 
with them that it would be far worse than a blunder to abandon our 
position. To attack the Spaniards by rushing across open ground, or 
through wire entanglements and low, almost impassable jungle 
without the help of artillery, and to force unbroken infantry, fighting 
behind breastworks and armed with the best repeating weapons, sup- 
ported by cannon, was one thing; to repel such an attack ourselves, 
or to fight our foes on anything hke even terms in the open, was 
quite another thing. No possible number of Spaniards coming at us 



252 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



from in front could have driven us from our position, and there was 
not a man on the crest who did not eagerly and devoutly hope that 
our opponents would make the attempt, for it would surely have been 
followed not merely by a repulse but by our immediately taking the 
city. There was not an officer or a man on the firing line, so far as 
I saw them, who did not feel this way." 

The Rough Riders heard the report of the rumor and asked one 
another if they were to give up what they had gained so hardly, by 
retiring. Not if they could help it; not if ''Teddy" had any say in 
the matter. They had not come to the war to retire, and unless the 
order came in the most positive language in which it could be 
couched they would stay where they were and '^fight it out on this 
line if it took them all summer," as a great general had said in the 
war so many years ago. Retire! They were not retiring men, and 
their Colonel was equal to them in opposing the idea. 

When night had come some of the men went to the buildings in 
the rear and foraged for food, for they had had nothing to eat for 
fourteen hours and had charged and fought all day. These men re- 
turned to the front in high glee; they had come across what was evi- 
dently the dinner of the Spanish officers, and it was still cooking in 
one of the deserted houses when they entered. They brought the 
viands along with them. And it was evident from the nature of their 
spoils that the Spanish officers were not starving, no matter how 
the Spanish rank and file might be suffering for want of nourishment. 
There were three great black iron pots, one filled with a delicate 
stew of beef, one with flaky boiled rice, the third with tender green 
peas. Also, there was a good-sized demijohn of rum, together with 
a goodly number of loaves of rice bread. There were even some 
small cans of preserved fruits and a few salt fish. The food was di- 
vided equally, and although among so many the shares were limited 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



253 



as to size, yet what was eaten freshened up the men and put them into 
extra good humor. 

General Wheeler, for whom Colonel Roosevelt had a great admira- 
tion, had resumed command of the cavalry division. Soon after dark 
he came to the front. A very few words from him reassured the men 
about retiring. He had seen too much first-class fighting in the 
Civil War to look upon the present fight as very serious, ''and he told 
us not to be under any apprehension, for he had sent word that there 
was no need whatever of retiring, and was sure we would stay where 
we were until the chance came to advance. He w^as second in com- 
mand, and to him more than to any other man was due the prompt 
abandonment of the proposal to fall back — a proposal which if 
adopted would have meant shame and disaster." 

A little while later General Wheeler sent orders for the men to 
intrench. The men of the different regiments were now getting 
themselves together again. All of Colonel Roosevelt's troops who 
had been kept at Kettle Hill came forw^ard. During the afternoon a 
number of Spanish intrenching tools had been found in a building, 
and these were now used in digging intrenchments along the Ameri- 
can lines. The men were tired, but they wxnt to work cheerfully, 
the officers joining and doing their part. Colonel Roosevelt using his 
spade along with the others. The Colonel mentions acts of gallantry 
performed during the day on the part of his men, and while these 
acts were so numerous that he does not attempt to recount them all 
in his book, 'The Rough Riders," yet he dwells on some performed 
by officers and the rank and file alike which stamp the men as brave 
as any the United States ever turned out. "We finished digging the 
trench soon after midnight, and then the wornO'Ut men laid down in 
rows on their rifles and dropped heavily to sleep. About one in ten 
of them had blankets taken from the Spaniards. Henry Bardshar, 
my orderly, had procured one for me. He, Goodrich and I slept 



254 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



together. If the men without blankets had not been so tired that 
they fell asleep anyhow they would have been very cold, for of course 
^ve vrere all drenched with sweat and above the waist had on nothing- 
but our flannel shirts, while the night was cool,, with a heavy dew. 
Before any one had time to wake from the cold, however, we were 
all awakened by the Spaniards, whose skirmishers suddenly opened 
fire on us. Of course we could not tell whether or not this was the 
forerunner of a heavy attack, for our Cossack posts were responding 
briskly. 

''It was about three o'clock in the morning, at which time men's 
courage is said to be at the lowest ebb; but the cavalry division was 
certainly free from any Aveakness in that direction. At the alarm 
everybody jumped to his feet and the stiff, shivering, haggard men, 
their eyes only half opened, all clutched their rifles and ran forward 
to the trench on the crest of the hill." 

But the shots died awa}', and the men went to sleep once more. 
Another hour and dawn broke. Then the Spaniards took to firing 
in good earnest. A few feet away there was a tree, and under this 
tree Colonel Roosevelt made his headquarters. Suddenly a shrapnel 
burst close at hand, not hurting those under the tree but with the 
sweep of its bullets dealing out death or wounchng five gallant men 
in the rear. 

Up to this time officers and men had been sleeping by the trenches 
or in the rear, with no shelter and only one blanket to three or four 
men. Fortunately there had been very little rain. AMien the bag- 
gage arrived later shelter tents were put up. The next day Colonel 
Roosevelt" snatched the time to go to the rear and visit his men who 
were in the hospital. 

Colonel Roosevelt's regiment in this engagement had numbered 
four hundred and ninety men only. For in addition to the killed and 
wounded of the first fight some had gone into hospital for sickness^. 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



251 



while some had been left behind to look after the baggage and still 
others were detailed on other duty. The Hst of casualties among 
the Rough Riders was heavy, and perhaps more than anything else 
proves their sterling quality to dare and do as much in their foremost 
position in the fray. Eighty-nine were reckoned among the killed 
and wounded. This was the heaviest loss suffered by any regiment 
in the cavalry division. There had been stiff fighting, the Spaniards 
fighting well and standing firm until the Americans charged home. 
They fought with more stubbornness than at the other fight, for they 
were intrenched and always did good work in holding intrenchments. 
Colonel Roosevelt contributes his word of praise for the foe, saying 
that on this day they showed themselves to be brave foemen and 
worthy of honor for their gallantry. 

The total Spanish force in Santiago under General Linares was 
4,000 regulars, i,ooo volunteers, i,ooo marines and sailors from the 
ships; 4,000 more troops came July 2d. These are Spanish figures. 
It is more easy to believe from American official statements that 
about lo.ooo troops were present on the ist of July. Colonel Roose- 
velt says that in the attack on San Juan hills our forces numbered 
about 6,6oo, and that there were about 4,500 Spaniards against the 
Americans. Our loss in killed and wounded was 1,071. Of the 
cavalry divisions there were all told some 2,300 officers and men, 
of whom 375 were killed and wounded. In the division over a fourth 
of the officers were killed and wounded, their loss relatively half as 
much again as that of the enlisted men. This was as it should be, 
according to the military standard of thinking. The Americans very 
likely suffered more heavily than the Spaniards in killed and 
w^ounded. It would have been strange if the reverse were the case, 
for the Americans did the charging, while to carry earthworks on foot 
with dismounted cavalry while these same earthworks are being held 



256 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



by unbroken infantry armed with the best modern rifles, is no easy 
task. 

There was to be more and serious work for the Rough Riders as 
the days went on, and they knew it and awaited it eagerly. They 
had learned the meaning of war and they wished tO' know more about 
it, to have engagements of stupendous size. With Roosevelt as 
Colonel over them they were anxious and willing to do their part 
toward the capture of Santiago which was yet to be. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

Before Santiago — Men in the Trenches — Continuous Firing — Spanish Guerilla 
Warfare — Lack of Medicine and Food — Red Cross Kindness — Cessation of 

Kostilities — Devotion of Rough Riders to their Colonel — Fort Roosevelt — 
Sharp-shooters — End of Truce — Fighting On — Storm and Privation — The 

Refugees — Surrender of Santiago — Stars and Stripes over the City — Return 
of Refugees — Helped by the Rough Riders. 

TIIE first night the men had dug trenches long and deep enough 
to shelter them and to msure safety against any attacks, but 
they had failed to put in traverses or approaches. Besides, 
the trenches were not arranged at all points in the niost advantageous 
places for offensive work, for they had been made at night and on 
unexplored ground. But while the work might not be scientific in 
construction it answered its purpose very well, as not a man was ever 
hit in the trenches nor in going in or out of them. 

The heat was intense, the men were crowded down in cramped 
positions in the newly-dug poisonous soil of the trenches, and they 
needed to be relieved every six or seven hours. Accordingly, Colonel 
Roosevelt arranged for their release in the late morning. On each 
occasion he waited till there was a lull in the fiiring and then the 
relieving party made a sudden rush, and tumbled into the 
trenches. Each time this was done there was a terrific outburst of 
fire from the Spanish lines Avhich proved harmless. When this firing 
died away the relieved men got out of the trenches the best way they 
could. By next day the Colonel was able to remedy this military 
mode of relief, which was thrilling, if primitive. When the hardtack 
came up that afternoon the Colonel felt much sympathy for the men 
in the trenches who, already hungry, ought not to go six or seven 
hours more without food. But he did not know how to get anything 

257 



258 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



to them. Then little McGinty, the bronco-buster, said that he would 
make the attempt to get to the men with rations. He took a case 
of hardtack in his arms and ran for the trenches. There was an out- 
burst of fire, but he was not hit. A bullet passed through the hard- 
tack case just as he leaped into the trench. Later, a trooper named 
Shanafelt repeated the act with a pail of coffee. At this time the army 
in the trenches footed up to ii,ooo, the Spaniards in Santiago about 
9,000, their reinforcements having arrived. The firing continued all 
day long, both musketry and cannon. The American artillery gave 
up the attempt to fight on the firing line and withdrew to the rear, 
out of range of the Spanish rifles. The dynamite gun was put into 
action and did mo-re good than regular artillery. It was fired with 
smokeless powder, and as it was used from behind a hill it did not 
betray its presence. 

Once a shot from the gun struck a Spanish trench and played 
havoc with it. Another caught a big building and from it ran 
Spanish cavalry and infantry, which the Colt automatic guns played 
upon with good effect during the minute before the men could get 
under cover. 

With pardonable pride. Colonel Roosevelt refers to his regiment 
as having been raised in less than sixty days, organized, armed, 
equipped, drilled, mounted, dismounted, kept for two weeks on trans- 
ports, and put through two victorious aggressive fights in a very 
difficult country, the loss in killed and wounded amounting to a 
quarter of those engaged — all this in two short months. He has 
reason for pride, for it is doubtful if there was a regiment that made 
such a record in any war in which the United States was ever before 
engaged. 

As the day (July 2d) wore on the fight, fitful at times, gradually 
died away. But the Spanish guerrillas gave trouble, while in the 
American front Spanish sharpshooters crept up before day had 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 259 

dawned and lay in the thick jungle or climbed into trees with dense 
foliage. From these coverts they fired, their smookless powder 
screening them from detection. Sharpshooter work in front was 
legitimate but guerrillas in the rear was another thing. At times they 
fired on armed men in bodies, but they preferred to shoot at unarmed 
attendants, doctors, chaplains, hospital stewards — at m.en who bore 
off the wounded in litters. The Red Cross emblem worn bv all these 
non-combatants, instead of acting as protection, only served to make 
their wearers special objects for the guerrillas' guns. The American 
sharpshooters showed little quarter for these guerrillas and started for 
a hunt for them, kilhng eleven, while not one of the American sharp- 
shooters was hit. The sharpshooters were after the guerrillas all day 
and did not return till night fall. Soon afterwards. Colonel Roosevelt 
established pickets and outposts to the front in the jungle so as to 
hinder the possibility of surprise. Fires suddenly shot up from the 
mountain passes to the right, all rising at once. The Americans, after 
consultation, decided that they must be signals to the Spaniards in 
Santiago from troops marching to reinforce them from without — for 
the Americans did not know that the reinforcements had already 
reached the city, the Cubans being unable to keep them out. At 
the same time, the Spanish were equally puzzled over the meaning of 
the fires and believed they meant an attempt at communication be- 
tween the insurgents and the American army. Both sides were thus 
on the alert. Evidently the Spanish were somewhat nervous, for after 
a sputter of fire they suddenly let drive their tremendous guns and 
rifles from their trenches and batteries. The Americans in the 
trenches replied well, and word was brought to Colonel Roosevelt 
and other commanders that the Spanish wxre attacking. The 
Colonel must know the truth. He ran up to the trenches and looked 
out. These bodies of Spanish pickets or skirmisers could be de- 
tected in the jungle-covered valley between the Spanish and Ameri- 



260 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



can lines, the darkness of night showing flame spurts not to be seen 
in sunlight, though the bulk of the fire came from the trenches and 
showed not the slightest symptoms of advancing. 

Under the circumstances, he came to the conclusion, there w^as no 
use of his men firing, which conclusion was also arrived at by Captain 
Ayres of the Tenth Cavalry. As Colonel Roosevelt ran down his 
own line he could see Ayres coming up his, and he saved the Colonel 
all trouble in stopping the fire at the right, where the lines met, for 
the Rough Riders there all dropped everything to Hsten to him and 
cheer and laugh. 

The night was spent in perfecting the trenches and making en- 
trances to them. At daybreak next morning the firing began again. 
This day, July 3d, the only casualty was a man in the ranks wounded 
by a Spanish sharpshooter. This day also, on account of the ap- 
proaches, the men in the trenches were relieved without much diffi- 
culty. The Spanish sharpshooters in the trees and jungle were 
annoying, however, and Colonel Roosevelt made preparations to 
have an accounting with them the following day. He selected some 
twent}' first-class men, in some cases the same men who had gone 
after the guerrillas. They were to slip into the jungle before dawn 
and get as close to the Spanish lines as possible and pick off any 
sharpshooter hostilely incHned, and any soldier who showed himself 
in the trenches. 

The Americans had established a little hospital under the hill in 
their rear. Doctor Church in command. He was very ill himself and 
had almxost no medicines or supplies or apparatus of any sort, but the 
condition of the wounded in the big field hospitals was so dreadful 
from lack of attendants and necessary medicines that Colonel Roose- 
velt kept all his men that he could at the front. But some of these 
men were beginning to have fever. They were patient, and lay on 
their blankets if they had any, or in the mud if they had none, their 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



261 



fare, hard tack and pork, which they dared not eat when the fever was 
high. Colonel Roosevelt s}aTipathized deeply with them but he could 
do nothing except encourage them. At noon on July 3d the troops 
wxre notified to stop firing, and a flag of truce was sent to demand 
the surrender of Santiago. The negotiations gave the men a breath- 
ing spell. That afternoon Colonel Roosevelt did all he could to get 
the baggage up. Details of men were sent to csivry their own belong- 
ings and they impressed into service any horses or mules at hand. 

'Their patience was extraordinary. Kenneth Robinson, a gallant 
young trooper, though himself severely (I supposed at the time 
mortally) wounded, was noteworthy for the way in which he tended 
to those who were even more helpless, and the cheery courage with 
which he kept up their spirits. Givers, who was shot through the 
hips, rejoined us at the front in a fortnight. Captain Day was hardly 
longer away. Jack Hammer, who with poor Race Smith, a gallant 
Texas lad who was mortally hurt beside me on the summit of the hill, 
had been on kitchen detail, was wounded and sent to the rear; he was 
ordered to go to the United States, but he heard that we were to 
assault Santiago, so he struggled out to rejoin us, and thereafter stayed 
at the front. Cosby, badly wounded, made his way down tO' the sea 
coast in three days, unassisted." Thus the Coloiiel, making an in- 
stance of each of his men who did something good or noble, his men 
his family now, their troubles his. 

Colonel Roosevelt was of the opinion that with all volunteer 
troops, and even with regulars too in time of trial, men will do their 
best work if their officers endure the same hardships and take the 
same risks. In his regiment, as in the whole cavalry division, the 
proportion of loss in killed and wounded was greater among the 
officers than among the troops, ''and this is as it should be." More- 
over, when the army got into food difficulties officers and men alike 
fared the same, and had the same shelter. The men had little to 



202 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



grumble about, for when they saw that the officers had nothing but 
hard tack any man in the regiment would have been ashamed to com- 
plain; when all slept out in the open and when the men saw the field 
officers up all night during the making of the trenches, or going the 
rounds of the outposts, complaint or shirking of work Avould not have 
been tolerated by the Rough Riders. When matters were easier 
Colonel Roosevelt had his tent and lived somewhat apart from the 
men, holding that an officer made a mistake in growing too familiar 
with his men, good though they might be, and that it was a very 
great mistake to try for popularity either in showing weakness or 
pampering the men. For the men wall not respect a commander who 
fails to enforce discipline, who is not acquainted with his duty, and 
w^ho is not willing to accept and make them accept all kinds of hard- 
ship and danger when necessary. He held that the soldiers who do 
not feel this way are not worthy of the name and should be most 
severely dealt with until they become the fighting men they ought to 
be, and not shams. At the same time, the officer should look after his 
men carefully; he should be sure that they are well fed and sheltered, 
and that in spite of grumbling that they keep the camp thoroughly 
policed. 

There was a cessation of three days fighting. The soldiers began 
to get their rations with regularity, hardtack and salt pork in plenty, 
and about half the ordinary amount of sugar and coffee. As rations 
for the tropics these might have been improved on, and the sick and 
half-sick could not be expected'to get well on such fare. On several 
occasions during the siege Colonel Roosevelt got his improvised 
packtrain in tow and sent or took it down to the seacoast for beans, 
canned tomatoes, and the like. These stores were obtained either 
from the transports which were still landing things for the need of 
the army, or from the Red Cross Society, The supplies of food ob- 
tained in this way did a world of good, not only upon the men's 
health, but upon their spirits. 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



263 



^'To the Red Cross and similar charitable organizations we owe a 
great deal. We also owed much to Colonel Weston, of the Com- 
missary Department, who always helped us and never let himself be 
hindered by red tape; thus he always let me violate the absurd regu- 
lation which forbade me, even in war time, to purchase food for my 
men from the stores,_ although letting me purchase for the ofificers. 
I, of course, paid no heed tO' the regulation when by violating it I 
could get beans, canned tomatoes or tobacco. Sometimes I used my 
own money, sometimes what was sent me by Red Cross people and 
friends in New York. My regiment did not fare very well, but I 
think it fared better than any other. Of course no one would- have 
minded in the least such hardships as we endured had there been any 
need of enduring them, but there was none. System and sufficiency 
of transportation were all that were needed." 

During the war with Spain we all remember the outcry against 
those in power for not sending the needed supplies to the soldiers, 
and those who fought in Cuba also know the meaning of "canned 
beef" and the unpleasant quarters of hours Colonel Roosevelt gave 
certain high officials on that score when he reached the United States 
again. 

There was an occasion when Colonel Roosevelt was visited at head- 
quarters by a foreign military attache. With the attache was a news- 
paper correspondent who had, been through the Turco-Greek war. 
\ These men were both very friendly critics, and they were aware that 
Colonel Roosevelt knew this. The correspondent finally ventured to 
remark that he thought our soldiers fought even better than the 
Greeks, but that on the other hand the American system of military 
administration seemed worse than that of the other nation, the 
Greeks. As a nation, the correspondent went on to say, the Ameri- 
cans prided themselves on their business ability and adroitness in 
the arts of peace; while this was credited by outsiders those outsiders 



264 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



did not credit the Americans with any special warhke prowess, and 
it was odd that when war came the Americans should have broken 
down precisely on the business and administrative side, while the 
fighting of the troops was especially fine. There could be little said 
in answer to this criticism, for the troops of the United States always 
fought well, and were fighting well now; and the ''administrative 
side" left much to be desired in several scrimmages in which the 
United States had taken part, and in the case of the Cuban war there 
had been tardiness and sometimes neglect, while the ''canned beef" 
and the held-back stores made any criticism of unwisdom at Wash- 
ington worthy to be heeded. 

Colonel Roosevelt was touched by the devotion his men evinced 
for him. When the men were once convinced that he meant to share 
whatever hardship came their way. they would seem to have made up 
their minds that he should share no hardships at all if they could 
prevent it. When rations were short there were certain to be troopers 
and even troop messes on the alert and who looked out for the 
Colonel. If they had beans they would send over some, or the 
Colonel would unexpectedly receive a present of doughnuts from 
some one who had been a round-up cook on the plains and who had 
managed to get a little sugar and flour and was bent on trying his 
skill on what he could do with them. If the men shot a fowl, the 
Colonel must have it, and it was all he could do to make them keep 
some of it for themselves. 

"AA'right, the color sergeant, and Henry Bardshar, my orderly, 
always pitched and struck my tent and built me a bunk of bamboo 
poles whenever we changed camp. So I personally endured very 
little discomfort; for of course no one minded the two or three days 
preceding or following each fight, when we had to get along as best 
we could. Indeed,, as long as we were under fire or in the immediate 
presence of the enemy, and I had plenty to do. there was nothing of 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



265 



which I could legitimately complain; and what I really did regard as 
hardships my men did not object to — for later on when we had some 
leisure I would have given much for complete solitude and some 
good books." 

There was continual watching in the camp. The men were notified 
that while there was a cessation of hostilities, yet there was no truce, 
and that vigilance was to be exerted on all occasions. In the trenches 
it was expected that every fourth man should keep awake at night, 
while the posts and pickets were pushed farther out, in advance be- 
yond the edge of the jungle. At irregular hours of the night Colonel 
Roosevelt would visit every part of the Hne, especially if it were dark 
and rainy. Sometimes these visits were extended and took in not 
only the Hues of his own brigade, but of those adjoining, and he 
notes with pride that the lines occupied by the Rough Riders were as 
vigilantly guarded as the lines of any regular regiment. Long ago, 
in far-off New York City, he had of nights strolled through the 
streets and visited the patrolmen doing their rounds, and sometimes 
found them napping. In camp he found precious little napping, his 
men needing no watching to keep them at their duty, for their pride 
was in letting no regular soldiers surpass them in anything that was 
expected of them. 

Other officers inspecting their lines would sometimes meet the 
Colonel at night, and they would talk over matters, wondering what 
shape the siege would take. It was a foregone conclusion that 
Santiago was to be captured, but exactly how it was to be done no 
one could tell. The failure to establish provision depots on the fight- 



ing line was serious, for there was hardly ever more than twenty- 
four hours rations ahead. If a hurricane came up, as was possible 
in this climate, and the transports were struck and scattered, or if 
several days of heavy rain broke up communication, as such rains 
most surely would have done, the troops on the front would have 




266 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



been at the point of starvation, and while they would have managed 
to live through it and to have captured Santiago all the same, yet 
it would have been accomplished after miserable experiences. 

Colonel Roosevelt set to work, and as soon as it was possible he 
got together for his regiment supphes of hardtack and salt pork 
which w^ould last the men for two days. He would not allow any 
infringement to be made upon these stores, but kept them intact 
to provide for possible emergencies. It was earnestly hoped that 
the city would, or could, be taken without direct assault on the en- 
trenchments or wire entanglements which the Spanish used lavishly 
all over the ground. Past experience told the officers that an assault 
meant the loss of a fourth of the attacking regiments, and Colonel 
Roosevelt knew that the Rough Riders were certain to be one of 
the attacking regiments if such an attack w^ere made. Of course 
everybody w^ould rather have assaulted the city than risk the failure 
to capture it; but it was to be hoped that Santiago would fall without 
the need arising of the loss of much life which a further assault would 
entail. 

Colonel Roosevelt, with the other colonels and captains, had 
nothing to say in the peace negotiations. These negotiations dragged 
along till a week went by since the sending in of the flag of truce. 
Each day it was expected that the city would surrender or that fight- 
ing would begin again, and toward the last the inaction became so 
irksome that the men would have been glad of an assault rather than 
staying and doing nothing. But the week when there was no fighting 
was not entirely a period of truce; "part of the time was passed under 
a kind of nondescript arrangement, wdien we were told not to attack 
ourselves, but to be ready at any moment to repulse an attack and to 
make preparations for meeting it. During these times I busied my- 
self in putting our trenches into first-rate shape and in building bomb- 
proofs and traverses. One night I got a detail of sixty men from the 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 267 

First, Ninth and Tenth, whose officers ahvays helped us in every way, 
and with these and with sixty of my own men, I dug a long zigzag 
trench in advance of the salient of my line out to a knoll well in front, 
from which we could command the Spanish trenches and block- 
houses immediately ahead of us. On this knoll we made a kind of 
bastion consisting of a deep semi-circular trench with sand bags 
arranged along the edge so as to constitute a wall with loop holes. 
* * * By employing as many men as we could we were able to 
get the work so far advanced as to provide against interruption before 
the moon arose, which was about midnight. Our pickets were 
thrown far out in the jungle, to keep back the Spanish pickets and 
prevent any interference with the diggers. The men seemed to think 
the work rather good fun than otherwise, the possibility of a brush 
with the Spaniards lending a zest that prevented its growing monoto- 
nous." 

Lieutenant Parker took two of his Catling guns and taking oft 
their wheels he mounted them in the trenches. He also mounted 
the two automatic Colts which he placed where in his judgment they 
might do most service. When the trenches, bomb-proofs and tra- 
verses were completed, and the guns mounted, the fortifications 
assumed a stern character. The men of the guns christened it Fort 
Roosevelt, and it always went by this name afterward. 

Midday of the loth came, and then it was known all about the 
truce. For fighting was on, though it would seem the mode of the 
Spanish firing spoke volumes of the lack of spirit that controlled it. 
The field artillery of the Americans was now under the command of 
Ceneral Randolph, who fought it most effectively. There had been 
a mortar battery established, and though it had an utterly inadequate 
supply of ammunition it rendered excellent service. The Rough 
Riders had not much chance, the only ones who could do much firing 
were the men with the Colt automatic guns and the twenty selected 



268 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



sharpshooters who were placed in the newly excavated little fort in 
the extreme front. Lieutenant Parker with his Catlings and his Colts 
had a fine opportunity of which he availed himself as usual. The 
battery in front of the Americans was completely silenced by these 
machine guns. This battery had caused a considerable amount of 
trouble at first as it could not be placed, smokeless powder once more 
advertising itself as the best that can be used in dealing with a foe in 
war. This battery was immediately in front of the hospital. From 
the hospital a number of Red Cross flags were flying, one directly 
above the battery. In consequence of this nearness to the hospital 
the Americans did not for sometime know that the battery was a 
hostile one. But finally powerful field glasses discovered its true 
nature. This battery, directly under the hospital, the Colts and the 
Catlings actually put out of action, silencing the big guns in it and 
the field pieces. The machine guns and the American sharpshooters 
made a most excellent showing in supplementing the work of the 
dynamite gun, for as a shell from the dynamite gun struck near the 
Spanish trenches, or a building in which Spanish troops were 
gathered, the shock was apparently so tremendous that the Spaniards 
almost disclosed themselves, and gave the Americans a chance to 
do further good work. Then the evening came on, and the parched 
and tired men began to make their coffee in sheltered places, and the 
men by this time knew so well how to take care of themselves that 
not a single man of the Rough Riders was touched during this second 
bombardment. 

''While I was lying with the oflicers just outside one of the bomb- 
proofs I saw a New Mexican trooper, named Morrison, making his 
coffee under the protection of a traverse high upon the hill. Morri- 
son was originally a Baptist preacher who had joined the regiment 
purely from a sense of duty, leaving his wife and children, and had 
shown himself to be an excellent soldier. He had evidently exactly 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



269 



calculated the danger zone, and found that by getting close to the 
traverse he could sit up erect and make ready his supper without 
being cramped. I watched him solemnly pounding the coffee with 
the butt end of his revolver, and then boiling the water and frying his 
bacon, just as if he had been in the lee of the round-up wagon some- 
where out on the plains." 

The Rough Riders were doing their work with the vim and pre- 
cision of regulars, and had become so used to war by this time that 
they took it as an every day afifair which must be treated from a 
matter of fact point of view. Until late in the evening of the loth 
firing was kept up and Spanish and American did their best. But 
the American differed from the Spanish in one essential point; he 
did not believe it was possible to conquer him; while the Spanish 
soldier must have known that his was a forlorn hope, and that while 
he might hold out bravely in the end he was bound to go under, 
though he fought for his government and fought well. It would have 
been preposterous for a cow-boy to think that he should come out 
anywhere but on top in the war, and those of the Rough Riders 
who had not been cow-boys or miners or bronco-busters caught the 
contagion from the others and determined that they had come to win, 
that Santiago ought to be taken and should be taken so far as their 
personal prowess was concerned, and they would fight to the end, 
until there was "a last man to hold out, though they did not intend 
that there should be a last man, for they knew how to look out for 
themselves as well as they knew how to fight. 

By noon the next day the Rough Riders with a Gatling gun were 
shifted over to the right. They were to guard the Caney road. No 
fighting was done in this new position, for though they had done their 
part earlier in the day, by the time they reached the position to which 
they had been assigned the last shot had been fired. 



270 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



'That evening there came up the worst storm we had had, and by 
midnight my tent blew over. I had for the first time in a fortnight 
undressed myself completely, and I felt justly punished for my love 
of luxury when I jumped out into the driving downpour of tropic 
rain and groped blindly in the darkness for my clothes as they lay 
in the liquid mud. It was Kane's night on guard, and I knew the 
wretched Woody would be out along the line and taking care of the 
pickets no matter what the storm might be; and so I basely made 
my way to the kitchen tent where good Holdermao, the Cherokee, 
wrapped me in dry blankets and put me to sleep on a table which 
he had just procured from an abandoned Spanish house." 

A short time after the regiment took up its new position the First 
Illinois Volunteers came up on their right. The following day, as 
the result of the fierce storm of the night before, the rivers were up 
to the roads and hardly any food reached the front. Colonel Roose- 
velt's men were secure, for he had provided for just such an emer- 
gency. But the Illinois men had not done so and they were without 
anything at all to eat. Colonel Roosevelt sent them beans and cofifee 
and hardtack. He then mounted his horse and rode down to head- 
quarters, half fording and half swimming the streams, and by evening 
he had got half a mule train of provisions for the Illinois regiment. 

Before all this, on the 3d of the month, the Spanish had driven 
out of Santiago thousands of women, children and other non-combat- 
ants. They were largely of the poorer classes, though among them 
were some of the best families. The poor creatures had taken very 
little with them in their haste. They spread through the American 
lines and went to El Caney in the rear, where the troops fed and pro- 
tected them from the Cubans. The soldiers barely had food enough 
for themselves, so the rations of the refugees were scant indeed. They 
came to the American lines begging for food, and the Rough Riders 
gave them all they could until the Colonel had to forbid it and insisted 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



273 



that the refugees go to headquarters. This was the fortune of war, 
and hard as it seemed Colonel Roosevelt was bound by duty to keep 
his regiment up to the highest pitch of fighting efficiency, 

On the 17th of July Santiago formally surrendered. The Rough 
Riders, with the rest of the army, were drawn up on the trenches. 
Suddenly the trumpets blared, and then up in the air slowly spread- 
ing itself out, went the stars and stripes. The cheering, the 
yelling of the men, the noise and the happiness of it all! When the 
flag was hoisted the fighting part of the work of the soldiers w^as over. 
When the surrender of the city was an assured fact the refugees 
streamed down the Caney road to Santiago. They were a squalid 
and dreary set. The Rough Riders helped them, especially the 
women and the children, giving them food, even carrying the little 
ones and the burdens borne by the women. Colonel Roosevelt saw 
one man, Happy Jack, spend the whole day going to and fro on both 
sides of the American lines carrying the bundles of a lot of very poor 
old women, or else shouldering children. The doctor at last warned 
the men against handling the bundles of the refugees for fear of in- 
fection, as disease had broken out among the refugees. At this the 
Colonel had to put an end to these little acts of sympathetic kind- 
ness on the part of his men. It was then that Happy Jack with due 
respect, but forcibly, protested that "The Almighty would never let 
a man catch a disease while he was doing a good action." The 
Colonel says that he himself did not venture to take such an advanced 
theological position. 



I 



CHAPTER XIV. 

Suffering of the Soldiers — Bad Commissariat — Yellow Fever Scare — Troops not 
to go Home — Meeting of Ofticers — Famous Letter to General Shafter — Troops 

Ordered Home — On the "Miami" — Talk to Men — At Home — Regiment 
Mascots — Present for the Colonel — Festivities before Disbanding — Farewell 

to the Rough Riders — Incidents of the Campaign — Colonel Roosevelt's Esti- 
mate of his Men. 




FTER the surrender the cavalry was marched back to the foot- 
hills west of El Caney and there went intO' camp. 



The Rough Riders were already suffering from fever, and 
in the new camp they became worse. All the army was suffering" 
equally, and there were but twelve ambulances, and these were quite 
inadequate for the work. The conditions in the large field hospitals 
were so bad that as long as he could do so Colonel Roosevelt kept 
his sick in the regimental hospital at the front. And it was not until 
almost the last day of their stay that the men had cots, but lay on 
the ground. There was no food issued that was fit for the sick, or 
half sick, which represented the main part of the whole command. 

''Occasionally we got hold of a wagon or some Cuban carts, and 
at other times I used my improvised pack-train (the animals of which, 
however, were being continually taken away from us by our 
superiors) and went or sent back to the seacoast at Siboney or into 
Santiago itself to get rice, flour, cornmeal, oatmeal, condensed milk, 
potatoes and canned vegetables. * * This additional and 
varied food was of the utmost service, not merely to the sick, but in 
preventing the well from becoming sick." 

By July 23d fresh meat was obtainable, and from that time on, 

matters mended. But the men were sickening all round, the fever 

a malarial one and recurrent. Very few of the men retained their 

275 



276 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



Strength, there were less than fifty per cent, that were fit for any kind 
of work. All the clothing was in rags, even the officers were without 
stockings and underwear. 

Yellow fever then broke out in the rear, chiefly among the Cubans, 
It never became epidemic, but it caused a panic — especially in the 
minds of the home authorities at Washington, who, misled by reports 
they received from certain of their military and medical advisers, 
hesitated to have the army come home, fearing yellow fever might be 
imported into the United States. Colonel Roosevelt vouches for 
the fact that these fears were groundless, and believes there were not 
more than a dozen cases of yellow fever in the whole cavalry division, 
while w^hen the men went home not a single case of the disease de- 
veloped on American soil. 

For a while the prospects of the troops were gloomy, as the 
authorities seemed determined that the men should remain in Cuba. 
The troops would probably have spent the summer in the sick camps 
dying or being hopelessly shattered in health if General Shafter had 
not summoned a council of officers, hoping by united action of a 
more or less public character to wake Washington authorities to the 
actual condition of affairs. In the province of Santiago all the 
Spanish forces had surrendered, and as so-called immune regiments 
were on the way to garrison the conquered territory there was abso- 
lutely nothing for the army to do, while no purpose was serA'ed in 
keeping the men at Santiago. 

'"We did not suppose that peace was at hand, being ignorant of the 
negotiations. We were anxious to take part in the Porto Rico 
campaign, and would have been more than .willing to sufTer any 
amount of sickness if by so doing we could get into action. But if 
we were not to take part in the Porto Rico Campaign, then we knew 
it was absolutely indispensable to get our commands north immedi- 
ately, if they were to be in trim against Havana, which would surely 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



277 



be the main event of the winter if peace were not declared in 
advance." 

The army at Santiago included the great majority of the regulars 
and was on that account the very flower of the American force. It 
was highly imperative to keep it in good condition, and to force it 
to remain in Santiago was synonymous with meaning its purposeless 
destruction. The taking of the army north as soon as the surrender 
was an accomplished fact should have been begun at once. 

"Every officer from the highest to the lowest, especially among the 
regulars, realized all of this, and about the last day of July General 
Shafter called a conference in the palace of all the division and 
brigade comimanders. By this time, owing to Wood's having been 
made Governor General, I was in command of my brigade, so I went 
to the conference too, riding in with Generals Sumner and Wheeler, 
who were the other representatives of the cavalry division. Besides 
the line officers all the chief medical officers were present at the con- 
ference. The telegrams from the Secretary stating the position of 
himself and the Surgeon-General were read, and then almost every 
line and medical officer present expressed his views in turn. They 
were almost all regulars and had been brought up to life-long habits 
of obedience without protest. They were ready to obey still, but they 
felt quite rightly that it was their duty to protest rather than to see 
the finest of the United States forces destroyed as the culmina- 
ting act of a campaign in which the blunders that had been 
committed had been retrieved only by the valor and splendid 
soldierly qualities of the officers and enlisted men of the infantry and 
dismounted cavalry. There was but one side of the question. There 
was not a dissenting voice, for there could not be. To talk of con- 
tinually shifting camp or of moving up the mountains, or of 
moving into the interior (both having been suggested by the 
Washington authorities) was idle, for not one of the plans 



278 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

could be carried out with our utterly insufficient transporta- 
tion, and at that season and in that climate they would merely 
have resulted in aggravating the sickliness of the soldiers. It was 
deemed best to make some record of our opinion in tlie shape of a 
letter or report, which would show that to keep the army in Santiago 
meant its absolute and objectless ruin, and that it should at once be 
recalled. At first there was naturally some hesitation on the part of 
the regular officers to take the initiative, for their entire future career 
might be sacrificed. So I wrote a letter to General Shafter, reading 
over the rough draft to the various generals and adopting their cor- 
rections. Before I had finished making these corrections it was de- 
termined that we should send a circular letter on behalf of all of us 
to General Shafter, and when I returned from presenting him mine, 
I found this circular letter already prepared, and we all of us signed 
it." 

The letter of Colonel Roosevelt bore the date of August, 1898, and 
was as follows: — 
Major-General Shafter: 

Sir: — In a meeting of the medical and general officers called by 
you at the palace this morning we were all, as you know, unanimous 
in view of what should be done with the army. To keep us here, in 
the opinion of every officer commanding a division or a brigade, will 
simply involve the destruction of thousands. There is no possible 
reason for not shipping practically the entire command north at once. 
Yellow fever cases are very few in the cavalry division, where I com- 
mand one of the two brigades, and not one true case of yellow fever 
has occurred in this division, except among the men sent to the 
hospital at Siboney, where they have, I believe, contracted it. But 
in this division there have been 1,500 cases of malarial fever. Not a 
man has died from it; but the whole command is so weakened and 
shattered as to be ripe for dying like sheep when a real yellow fever 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 279 

epidemic, instead of a fake epidemic like the present, strikes us, as 
is it bomid to if we stay here at the height of the sickly season, August 
and the beginning of September. Quarantine against malarial fever 
is much like quarantine against the toothache. All of us are certain, 
as soon as the authorities at \\^ashington fully appreciate the con- 
ditions of the army, to be sent home. If we are kept here, it ^Yill, in 
all human probability, mean an appalhng disaster, for the surgeons 
here estimate that over half the army, if kept here during the sickly 
season, will die. This is not only terrible from the standpoint of the 
individual lives lost, but it means ruin from the standpoint of the 
military efficiency of the flower of the American army, for the great 
bulk of the regulars are here with you. The sick list, large though it 
is, is but a faint index of the debihtation of the army. Not lo per 
cent, are fit for active work. Six weeks on the North Maine coast, 
for instance, or elsewhere where the yellow fever germs cannot pos- 
sibly propagate, would make us all as fit as fighting cocks, able as 
we are and eager to take a leading part in the great campaign against 
Havana in the Fall, even if we are not allowed to try Porto Rico. 
We can be moved North, if moved at once, with absolute safety to the 
country, although, of course, it would have been infinitely better if 
w^e had been moved North or to Porto Rico two weeks ago. If there 
w^ere any object in keeping us here, we would face yellow fever with 
as much indifference as we face bullets. But there is no object in 
it. The four immune regiments ordered here are sufficient to gar- 
rison the city and surroundings towns, and there is absolutely nothing 
for us to do here, and there has not been since the city surrendered. 
It is impossible to move into the interior. Every shifting of camp 
doubles the sick rate in our present weakened condition, and any- 
how^ the interior is rather worse than the coast, as I have found by 
actual reconnoissance. Our present camps are as healthy as any 
camps at this end of the island can be. I write only because I cannot 



280 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



see our men, who have fought so bravely and who have endured ex- 
treme hardship and danger so uncomplainingly, go to destruction 
without striving, so far as lies in me, to avert a doom as fearful as it is 
unnecessary and undeserved. 

Yours respectfully, 

THEODORE ROOSEVELT, 
Colonel, Commanding First Brigade. 

This letter and that signed by all the officers were made public. 
The result was immediate. In three days the army was ordered to be 
ready to sail for home. As soon as the news was known the spirits 
of the men changed for the better; they had been ailing and despond- 
ent even, while now they brightened up miraculously in the hope of 
leaving a pestiferous climate where there was nothing to do but to 
wait idly for death. 

In Colonel Roosevelt's regiment the officers began to plan methods 
of drilling the men on horseback to fit them to go against the Spanish 
cavalry if they were to make a try at Havana in December. The 
Rough Riders had eyed the captured Spanish cavalrs' with peculiar 
interest. The men were small of stature, and though the horses 
were well built and well trained they were diminutive ponies. The 
Rough Riders from the plains who knew something about horse flesh 
felt sure that if they ever got - a chance to try shock tactics against 
the Spaniards those gentlemen would go down like rows of nine 
pins. 

Colonel Roosevelt was still much occupied in looking after the 
health of his brigade, though his mind was considerably lightened 
by the fact that they were going home where he felt certain their 
health would improve. On August 6th the men were ordered to 
embark. Next morning the Miami took them aboard. A little 
while after leaving port the captain of the ship came to Colonel 
Roosevelt and told him that the stokers and engineers of the ship 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



283 



were insubordinate and drunken, a condition he thought due to the 
liquor the soldiers had given to them. The Colonel at once instituted 
a search of the ship, explaining to the men that they must not think 
of keeping any liquor. He told them that it they gave to him what 
liquor they had he would return it to them v/hen they got ashore. 
He further told them that he would allow the sick to drink when they 
really needed the stuff. And he supplemented his remarks by saying 
that if the men did not of their own accord comply with his request 
for the liquor he would find it and throw it overboard. Many flasks 
and bottles were handed to him, and he found some twenty or so 
which he at once gave to the fishes. This action on his part put an 
end to all drunkenness at once. The stokers and engineers becoming 
sullen and rather mutinous, the Colonel sent a detail of his men down 
to watch them and see that they did their work, and they were soon 
reduced to obedience. The Miami was pretty well crowded, but not 
so much so as the Yucatan had been on the trip down, though the 
fare might have been improved on. The water was bad and the 
"canned beef" was uneatable, while there were not vegetables 
enough, nor were there sufficient disinfectants, and the sick had very 
poor quarters. By the exercise of great care no serious illness oc- 
curred, though one man who had drunk a good deal of the fiery 
Cuban rum died and was buried at sea. Good weather prevailed 
during the nine days' voyage. 

At last the low sandy bluffs of Long Island were sighted, and 
late in the afternoon of the 14th the Miami steamed through the 
waters of the Sound, and cast anchor off Montauk. A gunboat of 
the Mosquito fleet came out and greeted the men and told them that 
peace negotiations were under way between Spain and the United 
States. Next morning the men marched ashore. Many were sick, 
and all presented a dilapidated appearance, unkempt, ragged and 
swarthy. There was a month spent at Montauk before the men 



284 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



separated, and the Rough Riders who had been to Cuba met those 
who had stayed at home and who feh sore on that account. They had 
given up a good deal to gO' to war and the war had gone on without 
them. 

''Of course those who stayed had done their duty precisely as did 
those who went, for the question of glory was not to be considered 
in comparison to the faithful performance of whatever was ordered; 
and no distinction of any kind was allowed in the regiment between 
those whose good fortune it had been to- go and those whose harder 
fate it had been to remain. Nevertheless the latter could not be 
entirely comforted." 

There were three mascots in the regiment. Two of them were 
characteristic. These were a young mountain lion which the Arizona 
troops had brought, and a war eagle belonging to the New Mexicans. 
These two it had been found necessary to leave behind in Tampa. 
The third mascot was a disreputable but very intelligent little dog 
known as ''Cuba." He had accompanied the regiment all through 
the campaign. The mountain lion was called "Josephine." She 
possessed a very poor temper, while "Cuba" and the eagle, which 
was named "Teddy," in honor of the Colonel, were noted for their 
good humor. In addition to the animal mascots there were two or 
three small boys who had also been adopted by the regiment. One 
was from Tennessee, and when the troops embarked at Tampa he 
smuggled himself on board the transport with a rifle and several 
boxes of cartridges. He rebelled bitterly when found and sent 
ashore, and the squadron which remained behind adopted him and 
rigging him up in a little Rough Rider uniform made him a member 
of the regiment. 

One Sunday before the regiment disbanded, in addition to the 
chaplain's address, Colonel Roosevelt spoke to the men. He told 
them how proud he was of them. But he warned them that they 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



285 



were not to think they could go back home and rest on their laurels. 
He bade them remember that though the world for a few days might 
treat them as heroes, yet after those few days they would find that 
they must settle down to hard work just like other men, unless they 
wished to be looked upon as worthless do-nothings. The men took 
the lecture in very good part and applauded it. 

"They repaid me by a very much more tangible expression of 
affection. One afternoon, to my genuine surprise, I was asked out 
of my tent by Lieutenant-Colonel Brodie (the gallant old boy had 
rejoined us) and found the whole regiment formed in hollow square, 
with the officers and color sergeant in the middle. When I went in, 
one of the troopers came forward and on behalf of the regiment pre- 
sented me with Remington's fine bronze The Bronco-buster.' There 
could have been no more appropriate gift from such a regiment, and 
I was not only pleased with it, but very deeply touched with the feel- 
ing that made them join in giving it. Afterward they all filed past 
and I shook the hands of each to say good-by." 

The last night before the regiment was mustered out was a 
hilarious one. In the ranks every form of celebration took place, and 
a one-time Populist candidate for attorney-general in Colorado de- 
livered an oration in favor of free silver as his contribution to the 
festivities. A number of the college boys sang glees. But most 
of the men improvised dances to give vent to their feelings. The 
Indians took part in these dances, pure bloods and half-breeds alike, 
the cow-boys and miners not behind in joining in and forming part 
of the ring that leaped and bounded around the huge bonfire that 
had been kindled. Next morning the colors and the standard were 
taken down for the last time. Horses, rifles and other regimental 
property had been turned over to the government, and officers and 
men said farewell to one another before they scattered North, South, 
East and West — to the great cities where business and professions 



286 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



called them, to the social clubs and the homes of wealth that awaited 
them, and to the plains and deserts and mountains of the West and 
Southwest. This was the 15th of September, and the Rough Riders 
went out of existence as a body, unless the country should again 
stand in need of their services Avhen they would be on hand. 

Colonel Roosevelt's conduct at the jungle fight of Las Guasimas 
and in the bloody charge up San Juan Hill, which engagements he 
most modestly speaks of in narrating his experiences in the Spanish 
war, made him a popular hero and gave rise to a large number of 
most interesting stories concerning his personal bravery and his 
influence over the men he led. At the very start in drilling this band 
of independent, high-spirited ranchers, cow-punchers and athletes 
into regimental shape he w^as not uncertain. In one of his first 
speeches to them he said: ''You've got to perform without flinching 
whatever duty is assigned you, regardless of the difficulty or danger 
attending it. No matter what comes, you must not squeal." These 
words of Roosevelt became almost a creed with his men. To do 
any thing without flinching or squealing was their aim, and to hear 
the Colonel say "Good!" was reward enough. One of his troopers 
who was invalided home answered a reporter who had asked if the 
Colonel was a good fighter, "A fighter? You'd give a lifetime to see 
that man leading a charge or to hear him yell. Talk about courage and 
grit, and all that — he's got it. Why I used to keep my eye on him 
whenever I could, and I've seen him dash into a hail of bullets, cheer- 
ing and yelling all the time, as if possessed. He doesn't know what 
fear is, and seems to bear a charmed life. All the Rough Riders adore 
him." 

Another told how Colonel Roosevelt acted when hurt by a frag- 
ment of shell on San Juan Hill. He said: "Teddy was with four or 
five other officers just below the brow of a hill upon which one of 
our batteries was placed, when a Spanish shell, well aimed, flew over 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



287 



the crest and exploded just above the heads of the group. Two of 
the officers were painfully wounded, but Teddy, with his usual good 
luck, escaped with a cut on the back of his right hand. It was trivial, 
but it bled. I shall not forget the delight on Teddy's face as he saw 
his own blood leak out. Whipping out his handkerchief after a mo- 
ment he bound it around his hand. A little later when he was near 
our line he held up his bandaged hand and said gayly, 'See here, 
boys; I've got it, too.' I never saw anybody so anxious to be in the 
thick of trouble as Teddy. The first day the Rough Riders were 
held in reserve he chafed terribly. He kept saying, T wish they'd 
let us start.' Wc all idolized Teddy. He wears a flannel shirt most 
of the time, and refuses to fare any better than his men. Why, he 
wouldn't have a shelter-tent when they were distributed. There 
isn't one of our fellows who wouldn't follow Teddy to Hades if he 
ordered us to." General Wheeler said of the Colonel on his return 
from Cuba: 

''Roosevelt is a born fighter, and his men w^ere absolutely devoted 
to him. While we were together on board the transport I had an 
opportunity of observing Roosevelt more closely than was possible 
in the hustle and excitement of the camp. What impressed me most 
about him is his absolute integrity. I am told that he is likely to 
be chosen as the candidate for the Governorship of New York, and 
certainly no better selection could be made. Some day his splendid 
qualities may earn for him the highest position it is in the power of 
the United States to give." 

Private Palmers, of the Rough Riders, wrote home to Kansas as 
follows: "When we came to make the final charge that took this 
position, some of the ofhcers wanted to fall back and leave it in the 
possession of the Spaniards, but Colonel Roosevelt pulled his pistol 
and said: 'You can fall back if you want to, but my men will hold it 
till the last man dies,' We held it^ and did not die, either, I tell you, 



2S8 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



Wood and Roosevelt are proud of their regiment. Our boys are 
proud of their Colonel. We fought ninety hours without sleep or 
rest.'' 

The Colonel never ordered his men to do what he would not do 
under the like circumstances. Here is what Sergeant Judson, Co. 
E, First Illinois Volunteers, wrote under date of Santiago, July 30th: 
"The Rough Riders and our regiment have for a week camped to- 
gether. They are a fine body of men, and Colonel Roosevelt is a fine 
fellow. I have talked to him personally three times. He is one of the 
boys. In the campaign against Santiago he was digging trenches 
with a pick, like his men. He sleeps in a miserable tent and chews 
hardtack like the rest. When we first came our food consisted of one 
piece of hardtack for each meal, and some water. This lasted two 
days, and along came Colonel Roosevelt on his horse. I was on 
my way to cut some grass to sleep on. He stopped me, and said, 'I 
know you boys are starved for food, but I am going to do all I can 
for you. So far I have managed to get some coffee and a number of 
cases of hardtack, which will start you. We are going to fight to- 
gether, and I want to see you all in good trim.' If it wasn't for him 
I am sure we would have been without supplies for some time." 

A man wrote as follows to a newspaper, under date of August 9, 
1898: "At the time of the long journey of the Rough Riders from 
San Antonio, Texas, to Tampa, made unbearable from the excessive 
heat and deficient food, my son, now slowly recovering from typhoid 
fever, taken in Texas, was prostrated by a sudden and violent attack 
of vomiting, brought on by the hot weather. Colonel Roosevelt, 
hearing of this, gave up to him his berth in the sleeper, taking the 
boy's place with the other men during the remainder of the journey." 

It is stories such as these, unstudied, spontaneous, that tell, per- 
haps, better than more elaborate recitals the manner in which Colonel 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



289 



Roosevelt was regarded by the soldiers and in what regard he held 
them. 

Innumerable are the instances of his kindness to the men of his 
regiment, of his patience with them, of his encouragement of them. 
He had had a long acquaintance with men, and he had many times 
been kind and patient and full of encouragement in circumstances 
where his personahty asserted itself. Perhaps in army life an officer 
is brought nearer to his men than is another superior with as many 
men under him. Soldiers at best are children, says an old army man; 
they trust and rely, and regard their captain or their colonel as their 
father to whom they ought to go with all their troubles and from 
whom they ought to expect just though most lenient treat- 
ment. But Colonel Roosevelt was not lenient to the point of weak- 
ness; his sturdy ideals precluded the possibiHty of that. When it 
came to discipline he never let his kindness of heart degenerate into 
anything like laxity. It is related of him that one day in camp, before 
Santiago, one of his troopers objected to the performance of some 
work which he considered menial, but which though unpleasant was 
necessary. Colonel Roosevelt, who had striven to impress every 
man while the com.mand w^as being recruited at San Antonio that no 
picnic w^as ahead of them, and that there would be many unpleasant 
and distasteful duties to perform, was vexed that the lesson had been 
so imperfectly learned, or, if learned, so quickly forgotten, and he 
became angry when the man got obstinate. He gave him a lecture 
that made his ears ring. When he had finished the trooper said, 
"All right. Colonel, I'll do it." Then he paused for a minute. ''Col- 
onel," he went on, "haven't you got a few beans to spare? I'm 
kinder holler." The commander of the Rough Riders had been 
scowling savagely, but the appeal for beans made the scowl die' away. 
"I'll see," he said; "come over here." The trooper followed to where 
Colonel Roosevelt's belongings were lying. The Colonel found a 



290 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



small can tlu'ee-quarters full. "Here," he said, emptying out the half 
of them, "take them and fill up your 'holler,' but you bury that 
dead horse at once, or there will be trouble in this camp, and you 
will be in it." 

The regiment distinguished itself in the campaign, and Colonel 
Roosevelt led the charge up San Juan Hill July ist. This is the way 
the charge was described in press despatches from the field: 

''Roosevelt was in the lead, waving his sword. Out into the open 
and up the hill where death seemed certain, in the face of the con- 
tinuous crackle of the Mausers, came the Rough Riders with the 
Tenth Cavalry alongside. Not a man flinched, all continuing to fire 
as they ran. Roosevelt was a hundred feet ahead of his troops, 
yelling like a Sioux, while his own men and the colored cavalry 
cheered him as they charged up the hill. There was no stopping as 
men's neighbors fell, but on they went, faster and faster. Suddenly 
Roosevelt's horse stopped, pawed the air for a moment, and fell in 
a heap. Before the horse was down Roosevelt disengaged himself 
' from the saddle and landing on his feet, again yelled to his men, and 
sword in hand charged on foot." 

Colonel Roosevelt's estimate of his regiment is characteristic. He 
considered them equal to the regular arniy men. For the officers 
he has the praise one soldier gives his fellows in authority, consider- 
ing the regiment specially favored in Colonel \\^ood, a regular army 
man, and in Capron, who had also been in the regular service. Be- 
sides most of the captains and lieutenants were men acquainted with 
wild life and accustomed to handling and commanding other men. 
As for himself, he had seen three years' service as captain in the 
National Guard; he had been a deputy-sheriff in the cow-country of 
the West, in which capacity he had exerted authority; he had hunted 
big game and done active work on his cow-ranch, so that horses and 
rifles Avere familiar to him and he knew how to look after cow-boys, 




MRS. ROOSKVEIyT'S CHURCH AND HER PASTOR 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



293 



hunters and miners. And then the Hteratiire of war had long engaged 
his attention, more especially that of the wars of modern times, the 
Civil War, the Franco-German War, the Turco-Russian War. But 
the men, the rank and file of the regiment — they were accustomed 
to hardy open-air life, they were hardy and self-reliant, they were in- 
telligent and resolute. They were eager to fight and determined to 
do well, to encounter hardship and privation, and the irksome 
monotony of camp routine they accepted without grumbling or 
complaining. They had counted the cost of war before they went 
into it, and they were glad to pay the penalties inseparably attendant 
on the career of a fighting regiment, and they had in them eager- 
ness for action and stern determination to accept death, but never 
to forfeit honor. From such men comes the respect all countries 
give to the country that owns them as her own, and these men had 
come from every part of the country when Theodore Roosevelt would 
go to war and wished a regiment to go with him. 



CHAPTER XV. 



Governor of New York — Exciting Campaign — Takes the Stump — Speeches — In 
Office — Appointments — Final Day of Legislature, 1899 — Pressing Measures — 

Original Methods — Tenement Houses — Needs of the Poor — Charities — Labor 
Unions — Labor Leaders — Self Help — Philanthropic Work — Young Men's 

Christian Association — Public School Teachers — College Settlements — 
Governor in Fullest Sense. 

OLONEL Roosevelt's campaign for Governor of New York, 



the nomination for which he obtained immediately after the 



end of his services in the war of 1898, was memorable for its 
excitement and its picturesque features concerning the politicians of 
the city and State; and though Parker (Democrat) had carried the 
State for Court of Appeals Judge in 1897 by 61,000, Roosevelt won 
it in 1898 by a lead of 18,000 over Van Wyck. 

It is safe to say that no Governor performed better service than 
Governor Roosevelt. As soon as he entered upon the office, and 
throughout his term, he showed a conservatism in marked contrast 
to the beliefs of his character which some had entertained and 
expressed. His accomplishments at Albany, during a most difficult 
experience, would be a sufficient monument to his character, and his 
ability, and above all his conservatism, if he had done nothing else; 
for his course was as persistent as it was wise. Previous to the State 
Convention he was nominated by the Citizens Union, but he de- 
clined, replying that he was a Republican. The Democrats, it seems, 
would have endeavored to frustrate his nomination by trying to prove 
that he had lost his legal residence in the State. The plan failed, 
and he was nominated in the convention by a vote of 753 to 218 for 
Governor Black. Colonel Roosevelt took the stump and delivered 
many speeches. These speeches were characterized by the fire, and 




295 



296 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



force, and common sense that had distmguished all his public utter- 
ances since he had entered the field of politics; and it is safe to say 
in this connection as well that his virility of manner, as much as 
what he said, influenced the people in his favor. As usual, corrupt 
politics came in for a goodly share of his contempt; unwise legisla- 
tion and faulty political reasoning, and the wrongs the people were 
willing to heap on themselves by not caring to assert their peroga- 
tives, engaged his attention; and his voice rang out and his words 
brought conviction till enthusiasm woke the echoes and shaky voters 
became firm partisans, for the candidate was convincing. 

When Governor Roosevelt arrived in Albany it was felt that the 
State would have an executive of such high integrity that every 
officeholder in Albany would understand that his accounts must be 
absolutely correct; that there would be no stealing or peculations, 
and that there would be attempted no jobbery in the Legislature, 
It was also felt that the standard of official efficiency would be raised; 
that inefficient public servants would be retired, and that their places 
would be filled by men whose capacity was beyond a doubt. Gov- 
ernor Roosevelt, impetuous as he was currently reported to be, must 
have seen that he must go cautiously if he meant to achieve the high 
standard he determined on in the offices of his subordinates. The 
newspaper correspondents could testify to the great care he took in 
appointing heads to both the Insurance Department and the Depart- 
ment of Public Works. Under the care of Francis Hendricks the 
Insurance Department became an honor to the State, and Governor 
Odell was applauded later when he reappointed Colonel John N. 
Partridge as Superintendent of Public Works, who had been selected 
for that position by Colonel Roosevelt. 

It had been predicted by Democratic orators that Governor Roose- 
velt would be '^too impetuous" at times. To this Governor Roose- 
velt good-humoredly replied that he acknowledged that he wa^ 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



297 



rather impetuous in temperament, but that he believed he had sub- 
dued this trait in his make-up. But a day came when his impetuous 
spirit blazed up, though no one of eminence has ever criticised him 
for that day's action. It was the final day of the session of the Legisla- 
ture of 1899, when he frankly expressed his opinion that the Fran- 
chise Tax Act ought to be passed, and it was passed. The members 
of the Legislature felt that public opinion was supporting the 
Governor, and they did not venture to defeat this measure. It is 
therefore a law to-day. 

Another "impetuous" act of the Governor was the removal from 
office of the District Attorney of New York County — Asa Bird 
Gardiner — on the charge that he ''gave aid and comfort to Chief of 
Police Devery" after that officer had been indicted for issuing a 
seditious order to the police force regarding violence at the polls. 

The record made by Eugene Philbin, an independent Democrat 
wdiom the Governor appointed to succeed Gardiner, soon disarmed 
the criticisms of all. those who desired an honest administration of that 
important office, and proved Governor Roosevelt's ability to estimate 
men correctly. 

Measures which he pressed with his personal as well as official in- 
fluence provided for the prevention of the adulteration of food 
products and fertiHzers; the betterment of wage-workers in tenement 
houses; improvements in the labor law and the system of factory 
inspection; the protection of game, and especially the honest and 
efficient administration of the State canals, and the extension of Civil 
Service regulations. The notorious Ramapo job found in him an 
insurmountable obstacle, and by the "Confessions of Judgment" bill 
the strong hand of the Governor saved New York City's treasury 
from much heavy legalized looting. His administration as Governor 
was original in methods, lofty in standards, and almost unprece- 
dentedly rich in results. He never made an unfit appointment, and 



298 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



he succeeded in inducing scores of capable and worthy men to enter 
the service of the State, some of them at great sacrifice. 

He found the State administration thoroughly political, and he 
left it businesslike and efficient. Whatever Colonel Roosevelt 
undertook to do must be well done; he seems not to have understood 
how to scamp a piece of work assigned for his performance, and 
what he could not understand in himself he refused to recognize in 
others, and throughout his incumbency at Albany he exacted a pre- 
cision and thoroughness in the work done which predicated good in 
the future for those whom the work intimately concerned. 

He kept three times over, and good measure, every promise he had 
made to the people in his canvass. He could not override the con- 
stitution and the laws, nor could he invent facts in order to punish 
those charged with defrauding the State by means of the canal 
service; but he could and did appoint a Commissioner of Public 
Works who kept to the line in every detail of his work. He helped 
to frame, supported, and caused to be enacted the best and most far- 
reaching Civil Service law in the country, and he saw to it that it vras 
lived up to throughout the State. He faced the whole power of his 
party "machine" in defeating the project to put the New York City 
police under partisan control at Albany, and again in compelling the 
passage of a bill providing for the proper taxation of the franchises 
of the great public-service corporations. He performed wonders for 
the dwellers in tenement-houses and the workers in SAveat-shops. He 
made it possible to secure a revision of the charter of New York City, 
and appointed the best possible men to prepare the revision, which, 
wi,th a few very unimportant changes, would go into effect January 
I, 1902. As Governor, Colonel Roosevelt so improved the whole 
tone of the State administration, and so effectually educated his party 
and public opinion generally, that future governors would find easv 
what was, before his incumbency of the office, almost impossible. 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



299 



Those two years of strict, businesslike administration of the Gov- 
ernorship of a great State were an invakiable preparation for any 
higher office to which he might be appointed by the will of the 
people. 

Colonel Roosevelt's tenderness and gentleness, his devotion to the 
needs of the poor, are traits to make him admired in those circles 
where too much of such tenderness and devotion on the part of a 
high executive are not common. Nothing about Colonel Roosevelt 
is more touching than the fact, related by Mr. Riis, that shortly after 
Mr. Riis had published his book, ''How the Other Half Lives," he 
found on his desk the card of Theodore Roosevelt, and written on it: 
'T have read your book and have come to help." 

For the poor have always been with Colonel Roosevelt. He 
thinks that there are many ugly things about wealth and its posses- 
sions, and that there are many rich people utterly lacking in patriot- 
ism and who show such sordid and selfish traits of character, or lead 
such mean and empty lives that all persons who are right-minded 
must regard them with contempt. But the first lesson to teach the 
poor man is that, taken in the long run, the wealth of a community 
is beneficial to him — that he is better off because other men are well 
off. As to the power of the State in regard to the poor he said it 
might be found necessary to interfere more than has already been 
done in the right of private contract, and to hold in cunning as the 
State holds in force. But there must be sureness of ground before 
getting legislation, and nothing must be expected to be done at a 
jump. Above all, it is criminal to excite anger and discontent without 
proposing a remedy, or only proposing a false remedy. He considers 
the labor leader, whether he be a political leader or a philanthropist, 
the worst foe of the poor man when he would try to teach the poor 
man that he is kept down by conspiracy or injustice, when in truth 
the poor man is working out his fate, hardly and sadly though it is 



soo 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



done, as the tremendous majority of men who are worthy of the 
name are doing and always will do and have done. Law can do much, 
but the difference between what can be done by law and what not is 
well exemplified by the experience of the country in the negro 
problem. Slavery was formerly the state of the negro in the United 
States. This was a great wrong which could be remedied by legisla- 
tion, and which could not be remedied except by legislation. There- 
fore, the law set the negroes free and made citizens of those who had 
before been chattels. When this was done many of the friends of 
the colored people believed that in some way or other additional 
legislation could immediately put the race on an intellectual, social 
and business equality with the whites. It is fair to acknowledge that 
this effort has failed. In many sections of the country the colored 
race is not treated as it should be treated, and in politics the frauds 
upon the negroes have been gross and shameful and have roused not 
only indignation but bitter wrath. ''Yet the best friends of the negro 
admit that his hope lies, not in legislation, but in the constant work- 
ing of those often unseen forces of the national life which are greater 
than all legislation." 

Great advances in general social well-being can hardly be met by 
the adoption of a far-reaching political or other scheme, but must 
come by gradual growth, and by never-ceasing effort to do first one 
thing and then another till the difficulties be overcome. Social re- 
formers often decline to favor schemes for practical reform because 
people with sane and wholesome minds refuse to have to do with the 
wild ideas of these reformers. 

"There has been an honest effort in New York to give the city 
good government, and to work intelligently for better social con- 
ditions, especially in the poorest quarters. We have cleaned the 
streets; we have broken the power of the ward boss and the saloon 
keeper to work injustice; we have destroyed the most hideous of the 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



303 



tenement houses in which poor people were huddled like swine in a 
sty; we have made parks and playgrounds for the children in the 
crowded quarters; in every possible way we have striven to make 
life easier and healthier, and to give man and woman the chance to 
do their best work; while at the same time we have warred steadily 
against the pauper-producing maudHn philanthropy of the free soup- 
kitchen and tramp lodging-house kind. In all this we have had practi- 
cally no help from either the parlor socialists or the scarcely more 
noxious beer-room socialists who are always howling about the 
selfishness of the rich and their unwillingness to do anything for those 
who are less well off." 

These words, written in 1896, show the practical way in which 
Theodore Roosevelt holds the condition of the poor and its ameliora- 
tion. He beheves that certain labor-unions, bodies of organized 
labor, such as the organizations which include railway conductors, 
locomotive engineers and firemen, and the like, embody one of the 
better hopes for healthy national future growth. But experience has 
taught men who have reform at heart that the usual labor leader and 
demagogue who shout aloud for depreciated currency or the over- 
throw of the rich will do very little to help those who do what they 
can to make civic conditions better. 

Vast numbers of w^orkingmen can be appealed to with confidence, 
but a large proportion of the men who call themselves labor leaders 
are influenced by short-sighted hatred of what they do not under- 
stand. What is more to be deplored is the fact that sincere and 
earnest men of high character and honest intention go far astray 
in their methods at times and thus are prevented from doing the 
good work they started out to do. A man when he gets out of the 
right road can do very little to help those who are already on the 
wrong road. Many and grievous wrongs should be righted, many 
measures for relief should be pushed, and it is discouraging that when 



C04 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT, 



good men and women are fighting the bad and championing the good 
those persons who ought to be their more effective alUes should de- 
prive themseh'es of their usefulness by the wrongheadedness of the 
position in which they have put themselves. Both rich and poor 
men do wrong at times, and whenever a particular instance of this 
wrong-doing can be pointed out all good citizens should join in 
punishing the doer of the wrong. But honesty and uprightness 
should be the tests, and not wealth or poverty. 

The municipal administration in Xew York (for example) has acted 
with equality in dealing with wrong-doers of both high and low 
degree. The Board of Health condemns tenement houses which are 
the property of rich landowners, whether that landowner be priest 
or lawman, banker or railway president, lawyer or manager of a 
real-estate business. At the same time, the Police Department has 
its orders to suppress not only the criminal, but the rioter of no 
matter what station in life. 

'']\Iany workingmen look with distrust upon laws which really 
would help them; laws for the intelligent restriction of immigration, 
for instance. I have no sympathy with mere dislike of immigrants: 
there are classes and even nationalities of them which stand at least 
on an equality with the citizens of native birth. But in the interest 
of our workingmen we must in the end keep out laborers who are 
ignorant, vicious and with low standards of life and comfort, just as 
we have shut out the Chinese." Labor leaders and the like often 
denounce the present social conditions, more especially those of poli- 
tical life, and accuse them of shortcomings which they themselves are 
instrumental in bringing about. In cities the faulty government is 
due not to the misdeeds of the rich, but to the peculiar standard of 
honesty and morality of citizens in general; and the corrupt politician 
has nothing that helps him so much as substituting wealth or poverty 
instead of honesty as the standard by which to try a candidate for 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



305 



office. Good laws can do something, but more can be done by honest 
administration of the laws. Most of all can be done by discounting 
the preachers of vague discontent among the poor and the laboring ! 
classes, and by upholding the doctrine of self-help and self-reliance J 
This is a doctrine which sets forth many things. Among them is the 
fact that while a man may now and then be helped when he stumbles, 
yet it would be useless to try to carry him along when he will not or 
cannot walk, while it would be worse than useless to depreciate and 
lower the work and reward of the intelligent and thrifty man to the 
mean level of the weak, the shiftless or the idle one. The same 
doctrine of self-help shows that the sentimental philanthropist and the 
maudlin sentimentalist are nearly as bad as the blatant demagogue, 
and that it is even fairer and more necessary to temper mercy with f 
justice than to temper justice with mercy. 

Colonel Roosevelt also thinks that it is the worst possible lesson 
to teach a man that he can rely on others and at the same time whine 
over his troubles. An American should have more pride than to 
accept defeat as his portion. If an American amounts to anything 
he should rely upon himself and not upon the State; he should have 
so much pride in his work that he has little time to sit idly down and 
envy the luck of others, and should face life with manly courage and 
try to win victory, while if defeat should come instead he should 
accept it and not try to place on his fellows a responsibility which is 
not theirs. 

The men with whom Colonel Roosevelt had worked most closely, 
while in New York he was dealing with efforts to better the con- 
dition of the people, were not capitalists except as men who earn 
money by their own toil and with prudence save it, are capitalists. 
They included reporters on the papers, principals in the public 
schools, young lawyers and architects, young doctors and young 
men of business who were struggHng to rise in their professions by 



806 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



working hard and faithfully, but who gave much of their time to 
doing what they could for the city, while a number of hard-worked 
priests and clergymen also rallied under the standard of reform. 
But there were no men of great wealth, nor any men who make for 
greatness in the public eye as being identified with immense and 
powerful business houses and corporations. Most of those who 
afforded assistance had at one time or another in their lives faced 
poverty and knew what it meant; some of them had been born here, 
some were of foreign birth; but in their hearts and souls they were 
Americans, and as Americans fought for themselves their battles of 
life, sometimes being defeated, and sometimes coming out victorious. 

Thus Colonel Roosevelt preaches his evangel of self-help for the 
poor and the worker who earns weekly wages, calling upon their 
best efforts for their own good, bidding them be men and good 
American citizens. The submerged he would place upon their feet 
a reasonable number of times, but if they fell too often they were 
either too weak to compete with life or they were too lazy to avail 
themselves of its privileges and advantages, and in either case they 
must make room for other and stronger and better men. It might 
seem hard to the weakling, but the world has never progressed 
through the weaklings in it, and the Avorld dare not stand still, but 
must go onward though it throw under it those unable or unwilling 
to get out of the way of the inevitable movement. While Governor 
of New York and dealing with the weighty matters of his office. 
Colonel Roosevelt kept well before him the problem of the poor. In 
a country such as ours it seems pitiful that all men who are declared 
in the Great Writing of our land to be born free aod equal should 
not prosper and succeed. We are an exceptionally blessed people, 
our country teeming with industrious advantages, and yet many fail 
where the one succeeds, and this ought not to be. There is 
room for all, there is paying work for all, but the difficulty often con- 
fronts the willing man as to where and how his abilities and endeavors 



PATRIOT x\ND STATESMAN. 



307 



may get their chance. Discouragement follows on repeated defeat, 
and the heart of a man may fail him when time after time he finds no 
avenue of escape from the thrall of want that seems to hedge him 
around and has no outlet. The Governor's sympathies were roused 
by the sufferings of the unemployed. 

In great cities there are districts ''populated to the point of con- 
gestion, where hardly any one is above the level of poverty, though 
this poverty does not by any means always imply misery. Where it 
does mean misery- it must be met by organization, and above all by 
the disinterested, endless labor of those who by choice, and to do 
good, live in the midst of it, temporarily or permanently. Very many 
men and women spend part of their lives or do part of their life-work 
under such circumstances, and conspicuous among them are clergy- 
men and priests. ^ ^ Most men and women, even among 
those who appreciate the need of the work and who are not wholly 
insensible to the demands made upon them by the spirit of brotherly 
love for mankind, lack either the time, the opportunity, or the moral 
and mental qualities to succeed in such work, and to very many the 
sheer distaste of it would prevent their doing it well. There is nothing 
attractive in it save for those who are entirely earnest and disin- 
terested. There is no reputation, there is not even any notoriety to 
be gained from it." 

Without doubt the best type of philanthropic work is that which 
helps men to help themselves. The Young Men's Christian Associ- 
ations and the Young Women's Christian Association are 
now spread over all the country. They are invaluable because 
they can reach everyone. Colonel Roosevelt is a beneficiary of 
these associations. He has often used them as clubs and reading- 
rooms when he has been in some city or town where he was not 
acquainted with the citizens. The associations develop the good 
qualities of those who join them. They have gymnasiums and read- 



308 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



ing-rooms, and thus furnish means for a man or woman to pass un- 
occupied leisure hours profitably or in amusement. The ordinary 
man or woman will not spend hours when there is no work in doinp^ 
what is unpleasant, says Colonel Roosevelt, and the only way per- 
manently to draw the average man and woman from occupations and 
amusements that are not healthy for soul or body is to give an alterna- 
tive which is acceptable to them. To forbid all amusements or to 
treat vicious and innocent amusements as on the same footing, simply 
gives recruits to the vicious amusements. 

When Mr. Roosevelt was Commissioner of Police in New York 
he got one of his policemen from the Bowery branch of the Young 
Men's Christian Association. He tells the story that he had gone to 
the branch of the Association one night and the secretary mentioned 
the fact that they had a young man who had just rescued a woman 
from a burning building, showing great coolness and courage. 
Naturally the Commissioner was interested, as he was always inter- 
ested in brave men. He asked to see the young man, who was a 
Russian who had some years ago come to America during one of 
the weaves of persecution in the realm of the Czar. He had been 
studying in the association classes for some time and wanted employ- 
ment. Physically he was the right type, and he passed his exami- 
nation for the force. He made one of the best policemen in the city, 
and in consequence of his pay he was able to provide for his mother 
and his old grandmother and to start his small brothers and sisters 
in life. Says Colonel Roosevelt characteristically, ''He w^as already 
a good son and brother, so that it was not surprising that he made a 
good policeman." The work of the State charitable institutions en- 
gaged the attention of the Governor who believed that the relief of 
poverty meant the relief of much stress on the State itself, that as 
the State is only an enlarged family the protection of its less fortunate 
classes would lead to a betterment of the energies of those classes and 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



300 



gradually produce good citizens from what is too often reckoned as 
the scum of civilizations. He has a good word for the public school 
teachers. The women teachers, especially, who carn^ on their work 
in the poorer districts of the cities, he says, form as high-principled 
and useful body of citizens as is to be found in the entire community, 
and render an amount of service unparalleled by any other equal 
number of women. These teachers are a great force for producing 
good citizens. They represent, moreover, the most potent power in 
Americanizing and humanizing the children of newcomers of every 
grade who come to America from other lands. The children of the 
very poor of foreign birth would be greatly handicapped if it were 
not for the teachings in the public schools. The teachers instil into 
the minds of the pupils loyalty to the flag and loyalty to the principles 
of good citizenship. 

Another element of good in big cities is the university settlements 
and the college settlements, where devoted men and women bring 
closer together the fortunate and the unfortunate in life. jMuch good 
result from these settlements lies in the fact of the "practical methods 
and the spirit of comradeship shown by those foremost in these or- 
ganizations. One particularly good feature has been their tendency 
to get into politics. Of course this has its drawbad^s, but they are 
outweighed by the advantages. Clean politics is simply one form 
of applied good citizenship. No man can be a really good citizen 
unless he takes a lively interest in politics from a high standpoint. 
Moreover, the minute that a move is made in politics, the people who 
are helped and those who would help them grow to have a common 
interest which is genuine and absorbing instead of being in any degree 
artificial, and this will bring them together as nothing else would. 
Part of the good that results from such community of feeling is pre- 
cisely like the good that results from the community of feeling about 
a club foot-ball team or base-ball nine. This in itself has a good side; 



310 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



but there is an even better side, due to the fact that disinterested 
motives are appealed to, and that men are made to feel that they are 
working for others, for the community as a whole as well as for them- 
selves." 

Beside all these methods to reach the not well-to-do, there are an 
army of workers which are not to be classed in any of the foregoing 
classes. These men and women do most good when they are in 
touch with organizations, though many individually meet the cases 
which are not provided for by the organized relief. 

Philanthropy deserves better than it has received at the hands of 
those who have sporadically gone into it ostentatiously and by those 
who are indiscriminate in their charity. An unmixed evil is any act 
that tends to pauperizing or to lower the self-respect of the poor. 
Colonel Roosevelt considers the soup-kitchen form of charity as de- 
moralizing to the self-respect of thos€ who patronize it as some forms 
of vice or oppression. Though when sudden and wide-spread disaster 
overtakes a community, as a flood, an earthquake, a blizzard or an 
epidemic, there is the best of reasons for an extension of charity on 
the largest possible scale to any one who needs it. But these cases 
being exceptional, the forms of relief employed to meet them must 
also be regarded as exceptional. The one thing to bear in mind in 
all charity is that while any man may slip and should be assisted to 
his feet, yet no man can be carried to his own advantage or to the 
advantage of the community. The really hard-working helping and 
charitable men and women who devote their lives in doing good to 
the poor neighbors as a class do not belong to the ultra-sentimental 
class, and they entirely realize that unwise and indiscriminate giving 
results in no good, any more than do wild and unformed plans for 
social reformations. Not any of us can make the world move very 
far or very much faster, but the world only moves at all when each 
individual in a large number of individuals does his duty. The con- 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



313 



tinually helped man rarely does his duty, any more than the con- 
tinually helped nation would look out for itself for long or have any 
desire to take a proud part in the congresses of the world. The strife 
to keep in with the passing throng, to struggle on against odds, to 
keep the head up when a weight is bearing it down, these make for 
bravery and self-reliance and must in time lead to results immeasur- 
ably liner than weak charity can ever hope to do. As Governor of 
New York Colonel Roosevelt had to do with many most momentous 
questions and all he did was from a lofty standpoint of duty to those 
he represented and duty to himself. The executive is poor indeed 
and may be classed with the moral pauper who inflicts his helplessness 
upon his constituents and makes himself a beggar in their sight. The 
corrupt politician is a beggar and a pauper of the w^orst kind, hiding 
his real purpose under an exterior of seeming need of the good 
opinion of his party. Colonel Roosevelt from the beginning of his 
career never flinched before his party, he was true to it because he 
had standards of a high character and lived up to them as an indi- 
vidual and not alone as the representative of a pohtical creed. Many 
times when he was Governor he went opposite to the wishes of his 
party, but in each case his actions redounded to its credit, and 
whether in opposing iniquitous legislation or in efforts to have nulli- 
fied bills whose execution would not benefit the State he firmly stood 
for what he knew was the right thing for him to do, and thus gave an 
impetus to his party it had never before possessed. As Governor he 
was upright, active and sincere, and New York has never had any 
reason to regret placing in power a man who worked for its good 
and Hfted it above any possible criticism on the score of injustice to 
the welfare of its citizens. The people made him Governor of New 
York. In this ofilice he Vvas misunderstood and misrepresented to a 
certain extent. He had always been against boss rule, and yet he 
openly consulted Mr. Piatt as the leader of the party. At the same 



314 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



time, he was his own Governor. He was deeply cut by misunder- 
standing of his motives. He had a duty to his party to perform, and 
there were those who were constantly urging him to split his party. 
The responsibility of avoiding strife of a factional character and of 
leaving the party in as good condition as when he came into office 
was his. His conservatism was mistaken for subserviency. But he 
had to deal with things as he found them. For the first year of his 
term of office the results were what might be termed negative. He 
said repeatedly in public that if little good legislation could be en- 
acted at least he was certain that no bad laws w^ould be put on the 
statute books. In the second year of his term much good legislation 
was secured. 

He had always resented the domination of money in public life and 
he never showed to greater advantage his opinions in this direction 
than in the passing of the franchise tax law in spite of the bitterest op- 
position. In addition to this, numerous reform laws w^ere passed. 
Jobs were turned dowm, and the Legislature was fast rallying around 
him. He was beginning to be a Governor in the fullest sense of the 
w'ord, w^hen he was called to accept the nomination of the Vice- 
Presidency. As Governor of New York his work was not yet done, 
and he desired to finish some reforms that were essential to the wel- 
fare of the State. A great work regarding the public school system 
was under way. His nomination for Vice-Presidency deprived the 
people of the State of his tremendous assistance and influence in this 
respect. But he had been called to Washington, and for the nation's 
good the State made a sacrifice and gave up his services in its behalf. 



CHAPTER XVL 



Convention of 1900— Senator Hanna and Mr. Quay— Senator Depew— Gover- 
nor Roosevelt Seconds the Motion Nominating Mr. McKinley for Presi- 
dent — McKinley and Roosevelt — "In the East, we call him Teddy" — "For 
Vice-President, Theodore Roosevelt" — Colonel Young Nominating Roosevelt 
— Enthusiasm and Excitement — For the Campaign — Speeches — The Country 
Knows the Man — His Work and his Christian Manliness — A Tribute — Vice- 
President of the United States, 

rnp^HE National Republican Convention of 1900, held at Phila- 



delphia, was unique in political history in that it nominated 



for Vice-President a man skilled in convention methods, a 
man of notably independent character, who used all his skill and 
asserted all his independence to prevent the nomination coming to 
him. 

It was asserted that Governor Roosevelt was a party tO' a most 
clever piece of political work, whereby he aided in creating a demand 
for his nomination, by insisting that he would not consent to it; that 
he still wished to be Governor of New York only. There is some- 
thing intensely humorous in the notion of Rough Rider Roosevelt 
turning play-actor in this way, though the argument was put forth 
by certain of the critics with perhaps humorous intentions; for it 
would seem they would have had the country believe that the man 
was struggHng for a prominent position in the eyes of his countrymen 
with all the fervor of a young "leading man" on the stage. 

The fact is, Governor Roosevelt, with the desire to make the Fall 
fight at the head of the State ticket, did not want to run with Mr. 
McKinley; and Senator Hanna, for an equally strong reason (that is, 
his desire to make it a ''business ticket"), was sincerely willing to 
accommodate the Governor in his wish. Certainly, these conditions 




315 



316 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



would discourage any ordinary movement in behalf of the Governor; 
but, as it turned out, the movement was very extraordinary and soon 
became complicated. Senators Piatt and Quay were first to realize 
the full strength of the Roosevelt movement, and first to see that it 
could not be checked without a jar to the organization they knew 
Senator Hanna would not permit; so, said critics, they posed as 
boomers instead of discoverers. One effect of this was to strengthen 
Governor Roosevelt's opposition to himself, and Senator Hanna's 
willingness to accommodate the objector. 

If on Tuesday, June 19th, Senator Hanna had flatly announced 
that the Administration did not want Roosevelt, perhaps he might 
have carried his point. ''But to have done so would have been to 
open the campaign without a trace of the hurrah spirit, and possibly 
to have strained some parts of the machine to the danger point, 
says a spirited paper that was jeering at the time. Senator Hanna 
and his chief advisers found by the next night that a large majority of 
the nine hundred and twenty-six delegates were under a spell of 
enthusiasm about the Rough Rider's character. Then the situation 
was accepted, and what earlier threatened to be a Convention lacking 
the spirit of enthusiasm came to a close in such a furore as had never 
before been exceeded in a Republican Convention. 

Except Governor Roosevelt alone, the most popular men in the 
convention were those who had been most scolded and lectured, 
condemned and caricatured, for their political methods. Wolcott 
and Lodge, two prominent United States Senators, temporary and 
permanent chairmen respectively, aroused no enthusiasm; Senators 
Hanna and Quay, neither playing any very great importance offi- 
cially, Vv-ere greeted with immense enthusiasm. Senator Hanna's sole 
official duty as chairman of the National Committee was to call the 
Convention to order. When he arose to do this he was surprised, 
almost startled, at the reception he received from the delegates. 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



317 



When he had been speaking but a minute or two he received another 
surprise in the way the audience of fifteen thousand cheered him. It 
resulted from the unexpectedness of everything about him — his 
manner, voice, excellence of oratory. 

Senator Quay was unlike Senator Hanna in every physical char- 
acteristic. His first conspicuous appearance on the Convention floor 
was as the proposer of certain amendments to the rules, cutting down 
the South's representation in Convention. This was scarcely a bid 
for a popular ovation, at least from the Southern section of seats; but 
the noted Pennsylvania leader received a greater cheer than even the 
national leader. He stood on the main floor several minutes before 
complying with the roars of demands to take the platform. When 
he did so. Senator Lodge was scarcely warm in welcome. The 
Massachusetts Senator stood facing Pennsylvania's ex-Senator, his 
hands clasped behind his back, his face not very hospitable (for he 
never liked what he called ''boss" politicians). These two receptions 
are mentioned here solely for their human interest. Their contrast 
was the failure of Senators Wolcott and Lodge to enthuse the con- 
vention. This was surprising in the case of the former, for the Col- 
oradan was a master of popular oratory which was calculated to effect 
immediate results when fifteen thousand people were addressed; but 
instead of using the methods so successfully employed later by 
Senators Depew and Foraker and Delegate Knight, of California, 
the Colorado Senator went into a fine analysis of President Mc- 
Kinley's administration. The audience scarcely wanted this, and the 
principal oration of the second day did not improve matters. This 
was Senator Lodge's speech. It was a strong, well phrased presenta- 
tion of the Party's attitude on all the subjects considered in the plat- 
form, but it lacked the spark for which the audience waited. Senator 
Foraker aroused by main force; Senator Depew by skillfully-used 
humor; Knight by florid imagery. None of these appeared in 



81S 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



Senator Lodge's effort, and the second day was closing with the 
nearly one thousand delegates listless, the fifteen thousand spectators 
with little to interest them to the point of enthusiasm. 

Senator Fairbanks read the Platform. The reading was long, with 
many "Whereases," and the delegates began to leave the hall by 
hundreds, the spectators by thousands. There was such confusion 
that Senator Fairbanks could not be heard, when up jumped Chair- 
man Lodge, interrupting the speaker, and severely lectured the dele- 
gates. He reminded them that they were listening to their Party's 
declaration of principles — the most important utterance of the Con- 
vention. But listlessness had settled on the convention, and Senator 
Fairbanks fairly hurled at the disappearing backs of the delegates 
the ringing periods of the "Resolved," which are usually wildly 
cheered. 

But next morning! The air was tingling with political electricity 
which produces those wonders which the experienced organizer re- 
joices to note. 

Bliss, Dolliver, Woodruff, Scott, Long— any one of these could 
have been nominated to an accompaniment of cheers, music, waving 
of flags and handkerchiefs. An official of the building said that the 
Convention hall seated fifteen thousand people, but it is believed 
eighteen thousand were within the walls when Senator Foraker rose 
to nominate William ]\IcKinley. \Mien he had finished, scenes of 
excitement prevailed for fifteen minutes — madness, glorious cheering 
and equally glorious yelling for the man who, finishing one term of 
the Presidency, was demanded by the whole country for a second 
term. Then the singing of "The L^nion Forever" by the wrought-up 
thousands! People who heard either sang or — cried! You must 
do one or the other at such stupendous moments. 

Then Governor Roosevelt faced that stirred audience, seconding 
the motion for the nomination. If he was moved to any degree he 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



319 



did not show it. He held a type-written copy of his speech in one 
hand, but he did not look at it once. His ordinary manner of speak- 
ing is torrential. It was so that day. He was all that the idolizing 
thousands wanted — strong in body and manner, dashing, fearless; 
and for all these the people liked him — and for what he lacked they 
did not blame him. 

His speech seconding another was his own nomination, for the 
people hailed him Vice-President and screamed for McKinley and 
Roosevelt. And Senator Depew said, drawlingly, slowly, "In the 
East we call him Teddy.' " At that there was no stopping the shout- 
ing, it rolled out in volleys, in shrieks, in thunders. "Teddy Roose- 
velt! Teddy Roosevelt!'' 

When Young, of Ohio, who was to have presented Dolliver's name, 
made the formal presentation of Roosevelt, the crowd began to call 
for the vote, and only Senator Depew held them, so eager were they 
to record the vote which should make the ticket beyond preadventure 
or change — McKinley and Roosevelt! 

But it was done at last, and the convention that promised so little 
enthusiasm concluded with uncontrollable floods of it that swept all 
over the City of Penn and scattered to the four quarters of the 
country. 

Philadelphia was in gala array; when the result of the convention 
was known the streets were crowded, bands were playing, flags were 
everywhere, and fakirs did a big business in hawking badges of the 
candidates. At night the city was brilliant with illuminations, while 
there were receptions for the delegates in the clubs, the hotels and in 
many private residences. Mr. McKinley's nommation had been a 
foregone conclusion; his four years in office had shown him to be a 
wise executive and a thoroughly sound man, while he had recently 
brought the country out of a war that redounded to its credit and 



320 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



gained for it the respect of the civiHzed world. But the Vice-Presi- 
dential nominee was another thing; there might have been any of 
the men thought of chosen, though as a matter of fact Roosevelt had 
from the first been a prime choice with the people at large. A 
number of the Rough Riders had come East to be on hand during the 
convention, and one of them who had never doubted that his Colonel 
would be the choice, held forth in the lobby of one of the hotels. ''We 
had been engaged in the hottest kind of work," he said, ''and it had 
lasted for hours, and after taking the first line of Spanish trenches at 
San Juan we were fixing them up for our own use. The Spaniards 
had been driven back, but the sharpshooters were still at it, picking 
off our men now and then. Mauser bullets were whizzing around 
us pretty lively and I noticed that one of our men, Johnson, was get- 
ting more and more impatient every minute and acting as if he was 
just aching to get at those Spanish sharpshooters. Finally he turned 
to me and said it was tough we could not get a chance at them. But 
just as dusk began we were ordered to advance beyond the trenches 
our forces had captured. When we arrived on the spot we were 
halted on the edge of a wood. Johnson and I were talking of the 
day's fighting when we suddenly heard the sound of a dry twig 
breaking. We thought it was one of the sharpshooters on the look- 
out. Johnson smiled. A Httle later the sound was repeated. It 
sounded directly ahead of us, and was certainly the sound of the 
cautious tread of a horse. Then a dark object appeared just above 
the top of the brush. Johnson said, 'A sharpshooter. I've got him.' 
He raised his gun. Then he let it drop. 'Aly God!' he said 'it's 
Roosevelt.' And it was the Colonel coming to look after the soldiers 
as usual, tireless and with the interests of his men at heart. And 
he's going to be Vice-President." He was going to be Vice-Presi- 
dent! And what had Colonel Young of Iowa said in nominating 
Governor Roosevelt for Vice-President? "On the ship Yucatan was 




COIvONElv ROOSKVKVr AT MONTAUK POINT 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



323 



that famous regiment of Rough Riders of the far West and the Mis- 
sissippi Valley. In command of that regiment was that fearless young 
American, student, scholar, plainsman, reviewer, historian, statesman, 
soldier, of the middle West by adoption, of New York by birth. That 
fleet sailed around the point, coming to the place of landing, stood 
off the harbor, two years ago to-morrow, and the navy bombarded 
that shore to make a place for landing, and no man who lives who 
was in that campaign as an officer, as a soldier, or as a camp follower, 
can fail to recall the spectacle; and if he closes his eyes he sees the 
awful scenes in that campaign in June and July, 1898. And the leader 
of that campaign of one of those regiments shall be the name that I 
shall place before the Convention for the office of Vice-President of 
the United States. Now, gentlemen of the Convention, I place before 
you this distinguished leader of Republicanism of the United States; 
this leader of the aspirations of the people, whose hearts are right, and 
this leader of the aspirations of the young men of this country. Their 
hearts and consciences are with this young leader, whom I shall name 
for the Vice-Presidency of the United States — Theodore Roosevelt, 
of New York." 

The words and the manner in which they were delivered were in the 
ears of the city that night after the nomination and in every heart, 
whether it beat for the Republican party or the party controlled by 
the Democracy, was the throb that told the fact that the choice had 
been made aright. A country may be grateful for deeds of valor and 
desire to reward the doer of them, but in this instance the Spanish 
war, while it had made a popular hero of the nominee for Vice-Presi- 
dent, did not alone vouch for his eligibility for an office which was a 
reward for work well done. Theodore Roosevelt was a sound man, 
a statesman and a man of exalted national sentiment, and with these 
characteristics, rather than as a soldier, he was to come before the 
country as the proposed Vice-President. 



324 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



The nomination was the most popular move the Convention could 
have made; that it would strengthen the ticket in certain sections of 
the country there could be no doubt. It was impossible, in view of 
the tremendous enthusiasm with which the country recorded its con- 
viction, to accuse the Convention of having erred in its choice of the 
man. Colonel Roosevelt's name was hailed from one end of the land 
to the other. He was the sort of person to find opportunities where 
few others would look for them, and while the Vice-Presidency is 
not an office of very great importance from an outside point of view, 
yet it was quite conceivable that in his administration of it Colonel 
Roosevelt would develop potentialities hitherto not dreamed of. The 
times in the United States Senate when Theodore Roosevelt would 
wield the gavel as its presiding officer were to be looked forward to 
with interest. That he would handle that gavel vigorously and 
honorably and for the best interests of everybody concerned there was 
not a doubt. It was the common conviction that the old order of 
things was about to be changed, and that the Vice-Presidency instead 
of being the graveyard of political ambition would turn out to be 
something radically different, something in which there would be 
seen a live man and an active mind. Colonel Roosevelt's wishes were 
not for the Vice-Presidency, and even the adverse papers said as 
much, and congratulated the Republican Party in its choice of a man 
who even if averse to the office proposed for him would be a shining 
light in that office. 

The platform, which was received with the same acclaim as greeted 
the candidates, was conceded by even the grudging ones to be about 
as satisfactory a document of its kind as could be wished. It was 
singularly free from clap-trap, and it said enough and not too much 
about the main features of the policy of the administration. It re- 
affirmed the gold standard, and in its wisely-framed paragraph relating 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



325 



to expansion and the duties of the United States in connection there- 
with, it successfully offset the Anti-imperialistic agitators. It made 
no promises that were not in a fair way to be fulfilled already, and it 
was altogether a most excellent and sincere presentation of the 
principles and policy of the Republican party. 

The campaign undertaken by Colonel Roosevelt was never equalled 
in the number of States covered. He was indefatigable, tireless, 
going thousands of miles and addressing millions of people, no two 
addresses alike, his mind fresh and vigorous at all times and in sym- 
pathy with every word he uttered. The interest excite.d and the 
number of persons addressed make this campaign unique in the annals 
of the country. He traveled twenty-two thousand miles, made six 
hundred and seventy-three addresses, many of them of more than an 
hour duration, visiting five hundred and sixty-seven towns, and 
speaking to three millions and five hundred thousand people. 

The campaigns which Douglas made in i860, Greeley in 1872, and 
Blaine in 1884, were historic in these respects, but not one of these 
candidates at those dates made a tenth as many speeches as Colonel 
Roosevelt in the campaign of 1900. Most of his itinerary was in the 
middle West and the trans-Mississippi region, throughout all of which 
he had always been a favorite and where he was now hailed as no man 
before him had been hailed. One of Colonel Roosevelt's gatherings 
was especially notable for its size, its exuberance, the number of ele- 
ments which it represented, and the enthusiasm and impartiality with 
which it musically voiced the feehngs of all sections. It was in St. 
Louis, that central point of the meridians and the parallels, the ming- 
ling place of the North and the South, the East and the West. The 
meeting was held in the Coliseum, the largest auditorium met by 
Colonel Roosevelt in his tour. In the great hall were crowded fifteen 
thousand people, and as many more were close to the building on the 
outside so as to catch a glimpse of him as he passed into it and out 



326 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



of it. As he entered the hall the cheers shook the structure, and 
thousands of flags and handkerchiefs waived like a forest in a tornado. 
The audience sang "America." The bands successively and miscel- 
laneously played ''John Brown's Body," "The Bonnie Blue Flag," 
"Marching Through Georgia," "Maryland, My Maryland," "The 
Red, White and Blue," "Dixie," and "The Star-spangled Banner." 

The demonstration was a magnificent tribute to the popularity of 
Colonel Roosevelt. 

The list of qualifications of the nominee for any ofifice of the land 
was long and varied. Neither Washington nor Monroe ever traveled 
so far or mingled with so many varieties of people before attaining 
ofifice. Jefiferson had as broad an array of accomplishments and in- 
tellectual interests, but no other statesman except John Quincy 
Adams and Garfield equaled him in education and in knowledge of 
the country's history and politics. Colonel Roosevelt's success as 
Governor of New York evinced his ability in high executive station. 
The Vice-Presidency had commonly been considered the last stop- 
ping place on the downward road to oblivion. The number of invi- 
tations for addresses received by Colonel Roosevelt from all parts of 
the country during his incumbency, and the enthusiasm which his 
appearance evoked wherever he went, disclosed the fact that this 
supposed fatality attaching to the Vice-President depends as much 
on the man as it does on the office. Compared with other Vice-Presi- 
dents, John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Jackson and Chester A. 
Arthur, Theodore Roosevelt had some striking and significant ad- 
vantages. He had a much wider public experience, civil and military, 
than the others. He was far better acquainted than they with all 
sections of the country, and with their peoples and ideas. He was 
on better terms with the leaders of his party than any of those four 
had been, while his mental equipment was larger than was that of 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



327 



any of them, and at the same time his personaHty made an immeas- 
urably greater appeal to the imagination of his countrymen than 
theirs ever did. 'The administration of each of these except Arthur's 
was a failure, and Arthur's made a break in the continuity of his pre- ^: 
decessor. The fierce factional fight precipitated by Clay in pushing 
to the front his project for the re-estabHshment of the United States 
Bank, which Jackson had killed a few years earlier, provoked Tyler's 
vetoes. These sent all his cabinet into retirement except Secretary 
of State Webster, who also stepped dow^n not long after he had 
finished the treaty which settled the controversy with England. This 
Clay-Tyler feud wrecked Tyler's administration and seriously hamp- 
ered the Whig party. Fillmore, the Northern man, was more obse- 
quious to slavery than the Southern man and slave-holder Taylor 
would have been had he lived, and he signed all the measures col- 
lectively called the compromise of 1850. One of these, the fugitive 
slave law, sent tens of thousands of persons out of the Whig party, 
and was one of the reasons for the overwhelming defeat of the Whigs 
in the canvass of 1852, in which they carried only four states — Ver- 
mont, Massachusetts, Kentucky, and Tennessee — as compared with 
twenty-seven which went to Pierce, the Democratic candidate. 
Lincoln's reconstruction policy, which would have taxed his powers 
if he had lived, Johnson attempted to carry out, after Lincoln's 
death, without having any of Lincoln's tact or any of his influence 
over the dominant Republican party. Arthur organized a conserva- 
tive and acceptable administration, which surprised as well as pleased 
the country. At the outset, however, he was an object of consider- 
able distrust. Arthur's accession to power was a triumph of one 
faction of his party — the faction which had been beaten in the national 
convention — over the element which had won the chief prize in the 
assemblage." 



328 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



But in the party which controlled the government of 1900 there 
were no factions, differences, or distractions. President McKinley 
was trusted and honored and his cabinet largely exhibited the quali- 
ties that went to make the chief a man of the people's choice. The 
election came and passed, and Colonel Roosevelt was Vice-President. 
The enthusiasm of the campaign followed him up the steps of the 
Capitol at Washington, when on the 4th of March, 1901, he took the 
oath of office. The crowds, the multitude, representing all sorts and 
conditions of people, from, every section of the country. North, East, 
South, West, had eyes for him rather than for the President. The 
President had been tried and not found wanting, he had done many 
wise things in the four years of hi^ previous incumbency and his party 
had carried him out in nearly every way that he wished. Vice-Presi- 
dent Hobart had been a good and respected man, and had filled his 
office commendably, notably during the Spanish war, when he had 
had much to do and had acted well. But a new man had come in, 
a man who had reconstructed the corrupt Police Department of New 
York against great odds and with only his own courage and probity 
to carry him on, and that he had not failed in his efforts at the time 
told that he was not only a true administrator but that he was also 
a fighter of rings and political coalitions. And he had fought other 
things than rings and coalitions; there was behind him a Western 
record when he had been a hunter of animals and a controller of 
wild men, while the Spanish war was a page of only yesterday's read- 
ing, and in that war he had done deeds that spoke not only of the 
soldier, but also of the man who was determined and resolute, pro- 
viding for the best for those under him; and a wise ruler of a few 
must be a wise ruler of the many. The office of Vice-President pre- 
cluded the possibility of much activity, and hitherto it had done little 
for the good of country or party, but Theodore Roosevelt was not a 
negative man, and his virility would assert itself in no matter what 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



329 



office he held. He was no figure-head, and the chances were that 
occasions would arise when he would let it be seen that the new office 
he had assumed was not to be a tomb for dead ambitions, as it would 
seem had several times been the case in the history of the country, and 
that if there was a loophole for active service the man just going into 
office would discover it and make what use of it he thought best. 
Whatever use he might make of that loophole would be honorable, 
for never yet in all the offices he had held, never yet by spoken or 
written word, never by deed or intent had he been dishonorable to 
his city, his State or his country. He was an American of the 
Americans, adaptable, energetic, choosing arduous tasks and accom- 
plishing them well. 

He is Vice-President, he presides in the Senate, he understands his 
duties, and he will do them at no matter what sacrifice to his personal 
comfort. He has not sought the office; he preferred to keep it out 
of his experiences; he knows that his abilities are circumscribed by it, 
but he is a patient man, even though an "impetuous" one, and he 
Vv^ill wait for the chance when he can bring into better prominence 
than has hitherto been attempted the rather vague office of Vice- 
President of the United States. He is one of the very few scholarly 
politicians. There are many men who are scholars and politicians, 
but in Theodore Roosevelt the two are completely fused. His char- 
acter is enriched but not complicated by the presence of the two 
elements. Each element lights up the other; as, for instance, where 
in his "Life of Cromwell" he is able to interpret some events in the 
great Protector's career with a precision which the more erudite 
historians have missed, and where in his political papers and addresses 
a helpful historical parallel or a happy quotation lends force and con- 
creteness to his argument. One evening at Philadelphia, in June, • 
1900, when his rooms were crowded with powerful men discussing 
whether or not his impending nomination for the Vice-Presidency 



330 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



was wise, and while an immense body of cheering paraders crowded 
the street below, Theodore Roosevelt sat in an inner room, alone, 
absorbed in reading Thucydides. He was resting. 

As Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, is associated forever with his 
poHcy of "Thorough," so Theodore Roosevelt has made his own the 
"Strenuous Life." This is almost universally misunderstood. For 
him, the "strenuous life" is the contradiction of a hfe of selfish in- 
dulgence, of unproductive dreaming and mind-wandering, and of 
careless neglect of personal and civic duties. The "stenuous hfe" of 
Theodore Roosevelt is not an active military life, much less a hfe of 
contention, bustle, and noise. Theodore Roosevelt is primarily a man 
of peace. He has long supported the cause of arbitration as the best ' 
means of settling differences betv^'een nations. He detests war, unless ' 
it be that conditions make peace for the moment dishonorable. He 
went to war himself against the urgent appeals of his family and of 
every intimate friend he had, not from love of fighting or of glory, 
and not from ambition, but from the sternest sense of duty. Great 
thinkers, great poets and artists, great men of affairs, are as much his 
heroes as are the world's greatest military and naval captains. It 
is the fact tliat they did, and not the particular thing which they did, 
that claims his attention and his admiration. For him, the philoso- 
pher Kant, who never left his native province, and whose eighty years 
of long life were given over wholly to abstruse thinking and to teach- 
ing the results of his thought, led a strenuous life as truly as did Crom- 
well, Xapoleon, or Lincoln. A life which finds no expression, which 
contributes nothing to humanity, which aims persistently at no lofty 
ideal, is the life that is not strenuous, as he uses the word which has 
come to be associated with his name. 

Theodore Roosevelt's activity is not impetuous. Few public men 
weigh courses of action more carefully than he, and few are so well 
equipped to weigh them quickly and accurately, A sluggish nature 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



331 



is not necessarily a wise one. Mr. Roosevelt's actions are prompt, 
firm, and decisive, not because he does not reason and weigh, but 
because he reasons and weighs while others are searching for some- 
thing to put upon the scales. He acts often upon his instinctive feel- 
ings and judgments, but this is an unsafe course only for him whose 
instincts are bad. The man of clear intellectual vision and of right 
feeling must act quickly if he is to act effectively. 

Theodore Roosevelt believes that the world is a good world, that 
it is ruled by a divine Providence whose eternal purposes are just, and 
he relies with absolute confidence upon the results of a direct and 
clear appeal to the sense of right and of honor in his fellow-m.an. 

But another class of citizens would know of the man. He con- 
sorted largely with this class when Police Commissioner of New York 
— they were the men and women who did good work for the poor, 
clergymen, priests, men and women who spend their lives for the up- 
lifting of brothers and sisters who have gone under and need a 
friendly hand. These men and women do their goodly work largely 
upheld by a belief in that Providence that reckons no life of small 
account, and who notes even the fall of a sparrow. What is the 
attitude of Theodore Roosevelt toward that Providence as a man? 

Says Jacob A. Riis: "The bitterest critics of his administration of 
the police in New York know now, if they were capable of learning, 
that his practical wisdom in dealing with that task was as great as his 
unhesitating courage. That task was to rescue the police from its 
partnership with corruption, and with unerring instinct he struck at 
the slough in which the corruption grew — the saloon. In no man's 
hands that lives and owns American citizenship to-day are the 
country's honor and welfare safer than in Theodore Roosevelt's. And 
the country knows it well. 

Men who called him hasty in the old days have lived to heartily 
wish that they had spent their energies pushing on the load he 



332 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



dragged almost alone, instead of trying to persuade him from doing 
his duty in the interest of expediency, or denouncing him for not 
heeding them. Not that the one thing or the other made any differ- 
ence to him. That the load was there to be dragged up the hill was 
enough for him. He stopped neither to consider the size of it, nor 
how steep was the hill. Above all, he did nothing hastily, but of 
deliberate purpose, most carefully weighed and thought out. In 
those days I was with him every day, almost every hour, and I knew 
not only what he did, but how he did it. One difference between 
him and his critics was that he had given his Hfe to the patient study 
of the problems upon which they jumped with such headlong haste, 
anxious only to prevent ''trouble," and hence that he was able to see 
clearly where their fears made them blind; another was that, fore- 
seeing clearly, among other things, the consequences to himself, he 
was not afraid, for beyond and behind them he saw ever the duty he 
had sworn to do faithfully. 

So it came about that during those turbulent times Air. Roosevelt's 
appeal was ever to the moral forces of the community, to the forces 
making for decency and order, and it was their support that was his 
backing. The direct way to a thing was always his. When there was 
trouble with labor he sent for its leaders, and put the question straight 
— what they wanted; and when, not knowing the manner of man they 
had to do with, they tried blustering, he put them right in ten words, 
showing them clearly that they were their own worst enemies in 
fomenting trouble, and that, meeting him on that ground, they would 
lose the fight, — then turned back to the subject under advisement as 
if nothing had happened. And they applauded the man, and showed 
that they themselves were men in doing it. When he was governor, 
and wanted to see how the laws regarding sweating were carried out, 
he sent first for the labor men, told them what he wanted, and asked 
them to help him. Afterward he went himself, and saw what was 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



333 



done and what was not done. It was so always. It was thus that he, 
as a very young man serving in the Legislature, went to the bottom 
of the tenement-house cigar-makers' grievous troubles, and, having 
made out their side very clearly, took it without hesitation, to the 
amazement of the cynics, who, speechless, beheld a ''silk stocking" 
take up the cause of the poor because it was the cause of right. And 
it was so that as police commissioner and governor, he gave his 
nights, as his days, to personal inspection of the wrongs he was asked 
to right. Having ascertained the facts, he went to the men who 
ought to help, and told them so. During the deadlock in the police 
board his appeal was constantly to the churches and the clergy, that 
of his opponents as constantly to politics and the politicians. The . 
result we see in New York to-day: the police force, since his grip 
upon it was loosened, is deeper in the rut of politics and corruption 
than ever, but in the battle against the conspiracy, which is bound to 
win, the clergy and the churches lead. They are fighting Roosevelt's 
fight to-day, with the Bishop of New York at the forefront of battle. 

If there be any yet who believe him ''hasty," they will find them- 
selves disappointed in that, as always before. Roosevelt has per- 
sistently disappointed his enemies from the very beginning. Seeing 
his rapid rise, they compared him to a rocket, and said that he would 
come down a stick presently. And so he would have done had he 
been, as they thought, a politician. But he was a statesman — a man 
of destiny because a man of duty. 

That is the key-note of his life. It was his father's, one of the most 
useful and public-spirited men who ever lived in New York, — a man 
whose life was, and is, a lesson to us all, and whose death moved the 
metropolis to such sorrow as it has seldom felt for any citizen. His 
high ideals of citizenship he got from him; his sanity, too, I fancy, 
for it was a distinguishing mark of one, and is of the other. So was 
his fairness, his sober sense of justice, for which the policemen in 



334 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



Mulberry Street love him yet in secret. They dare not mention his 
name openly in these days of Tammany rule. For once, and once 
only, the honest policeman who did his duty, but had no pull, had an 
equal chance with the schemer. Neither kind will soon forget the 
two years of Roosevelt. I well remember the time I clashed wath all 
three of the qualities in him which I have mentioned. It was w^hen 
a woman was condemned to death for the foul and wicked murder of 
her step-daughter, and he, as governor, was beset by an endless array 
of more or less maudlin petitions praying for pardon. I, too, labored 
with him. I did not like the execution, but more — I never owned it 
before, he would have been the last man to bring that argument to — 
I feared the effect of it on his career. I was weak and foolish, I know 
A. M. train went back to the city, I argued it with him in his study, 
it now. I went to Albany, and all that evening and night, till the i 
I pleaded on every ground I knew how, and I saw in his face the 
yearning to see it as his friend did. But he could not. He had 
pardoned others before, and I knew^ it was his dear delight to temper 
justice with mercy where it could rightly be done. Roosevelt is 
farthest from being a hard man; his heart is as tender as a w^oman's 
where it may be, as hard as steel where it must be. In this case he was 
absolutely right. Every consideration of fairness and justice de- 
manded that the law take its course if the prisoner was responsible. 
That fact he ascertained by the strictest scrutiny, and then stood 
aside, heedless of the clamor. It was with something almost of awe 
that I saw him do it, for I knew what it cost him. 

Theodore Roosevelt loves children. When he was a police com- 
missioner, we would sometimes go together to the Italian school of 
the Children's Aid Society, or some kindred place, and I loved of all 
things to hear him talk to the little ones. They did too. I fancy he 
left behind him on every one of those trips a streak of little patriots 
to whom, as they grow up, the memory of their hour with 'Teddy" 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



335 



will be a whole manual of good citizenship. I know one little girl 
out on Long Island who is to-day hugging the thought of the hand- 
shake he gave her as the most precious of her memories. And so do 
I, for I saw him spy her, — poor, pale little thing, in her threadbare 
jacket, — way back in the crowd of school-children that swarmed 
about his train, and I saw him dash into the surging tide Hke a strong 
swimmer striking from the shore, make a way through the shouting 
mob of youngsters clear to where she was on the outskirts looking on 
hopelessly, catch and shake her hand as if his very heart were in his, 
and then catch the moving train on the run, wdiile she looked after 
it, her face one big, happy smile. That was Roosevelt, every inch of 
him. 

His home is one of the happiest I know of, for love is at the helm. 
It is his harbor of refuge, which he insists on preserving sacred to 
him and his, whatever storms rage without. And in this also he is 
faithful to the highest of American ideals, to his country's best tra- 
ditions. The only time I saw him so angry as to nearly lose his 
temper was when he was told that his enemies in the police depart- 
ment, who never grasped the kind of man they had to do with, or 
were able to do it, were shadowing him nightly from his office to his 
home, thinking to catch him in some wrong. He flushed hotly. 

"What!" he said, "going home to my babies?" But his anger died 
in a sad little laugh of contempt. That was their way, not his. When, 
soon after, the opportunity came to him to pay them back in their 
own coin, he spurned it with loathing. He fought fair even with 
scoundrels. 

A just man and a fair; a man of duty and principle, never, by any 
chance, of expediency, political or personal; a reverent man of few 
public professions, but of practice, private and public, ever in accord 
with the highest ideals of Christian manliness. In fact, I know of no 
one who typifies better the Christian gentleman. In the hands of 



336 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



such a man, no one but a frightened newspaper editor, whose secret 
wish is father to his fears, need be afraid to leave the destinies of our 
country." 

A Christian gentleman, a reformer and a soldier became Vice-Presi- 
dent of the country in 1901. That he appreciated his ofhce, that he 
had studied to comprehend its relation to the country was not to be 
doubted. 



CHAPTER XVII. 



The Office of Vice-President Unique— History of the Office— Electoral Col- 
lege—Distrust of Party Government— The Vice-President's Theory of Vice- 
Presidency— Examples Cited— List of Books Written by Roosevelt— Address 
in Minnesota— Life of Effort— Right Start— Law and Prosperity— x\massing 

Fortune— Say what you Mean — Dealings with Cuba — Essential of Civiliza- 
tion — President McKinley Shot. 



UNIQUE office is that of the Vice-President, both in his char- 



acter and functions. There is little for him to do while he 



remains Vice-President, and yet at any moment he may be 
called to become the head of the nation. The history of such an 
office cannot but be interesting. 

The men who drew up the Declaration of Independence, the 
founders of the government, in some instances failed entirely to 
achieve what they had endeavored to do by a most elaborate gov- 
ernmental arrangement, while in others they builded most wisely 
of set purpose. 

What would now be called "pure democracy" they distrusted, and 
they dreaded what we would now call party government. "Their 
distrust of democracy induced them to construct the Electoral 
College," says Theodore Roosevelt in his paper on the Vice-Presi- 
dency, "for the choice of a President, the original idea being that the 
people should elect their best and wisest men, who, in turn, should, 
untrammeled by outside pressure, elect a President. As a matter of 
fact the functions of the electorate have now by time and custom 
become of little more importance than those of so many letter- 
carriers. They deliver the electoral votes of their States just as a 
letter-carrier delivers his mail." The distrust felt by the founders of 
the Constitution for party government took shape in the scheme to 




337 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



provide that the majority party should have the foremost place, and 
the minority party the second place, in the national executive. The 
man who got the greatest number of electoral votes was made Presi- 
dent, and the man who received the second greatest number was 
made Vice-President, on a theory somewhat akin to that by which 
certain reformers hope to revolutionize our system of voting at the 
present day. 

In the article to which we refer, Mr. Roosevelt reviewed the history 
of the Vice-Presidential nominations, and criticised sharply the cus- 
tom "of offering the Vice-Presidency as a consolation prize to be 
given in many cases to the very men who w^ere most bitterly opposed 
to the nomination of the successful candidate for President." Mr. 
Roosevelt went on to show how, on the death of the elder Harrison, 
guard of supporters in the nation, and who proceeded to oppose all 
the measures of the immense majority of those who elected him." In 
"the Presidency fell into the hands of a man who had but a corporal's 
the case of the death of President Lincoln, Mr. Roosevelt remarks 
that ''Jo^i^son was put on the ticket largely for geographical reasons, 
and on the death of Lincoln he tried to reverse the policy of the party 
which had put him in office." His historical comment upon a more 
recent case proceeds as follows: 

"An instance of an entirely different kind is afforded by Garfield 
and Arthur. The differences between these two party leaders were 
mainly merely factional. Each stood squarely on the platform of 
the party, and all the principles advocated by one were advocated by 
the other; yet the death of Garfield meant a complete overturn in the 
personnel of the upper Republican officials, because Arthur had been 
nominated expressly to placate the group of party leaders who most 
objected to the nomination of Garfield. Arthur made a very good 
President, but the bitterness caused by his succession to power nearly 
tore the party in twain." 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



339 



Mr. Roosevelt's own theory was that the Vice-President should be 
selected with very distinct reference to the fact that he might at any 
moment be called upon to act as President, in view of which he 
ought, at the outset, to be in recognized harmony with the Presi- 
dent's policy and practical administration, and ought, further, to be 
kept in touch by close consultation. Under these circumstances, the 
Vice-President, being part and parcel of the administration, so to 
speak, would step quietly into the executive of!ice in case of the 
President's death, and continue the administration with as little 
shock, uncertainty, or change as possible. 

On these matters Mr. Roosevelt expressed himself, in words that 
have now a peculiar interest, as follows: 

'The Vice-President should, so far as possible represent the same 
views and principles which have secured the nomination and election 
of the President, and he should be a man standing well in the councils 
of the party, trusted by his fellow-party leaders, and able, in the event 
of any accident to his chief, to take up the work of the latter just 
where it was left. The Republican party has this year nominated such 
a man in the person of Mr. Hobart. But nominations of this kind 
have by no means been always the rule of recent years. No change 
of parties, for instance, could well produce a greater revolution in 
policy than would have been produced at almost any time during the 
last three years if Mr. Cleveland had died and Mr. Stevenson had 
succeeded him. 

''One sure way to secure this desired result would undoubtedly be 
to increase the power of the Vice-President. He should always be a 
man who would be consulted by the President on every great party 
question. It would be very well if he were given a seat in the Cabinet. 
It might be well if in addition to his vote in the Senate in the event 
of a tie he should be given a vote, on ordinary occasions, and per- 
chance on occasions a voice in the debates. A man of the character 



340 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT 



of i\Ir. Hobart is sure to make his weight felt in an administration, 
but the power of thus exercising influence should be made official 
rather than personal." 

While the late Vice-President Hobart was in no official sense a 
member of the cabinet, it is well known that President McKinley 
consulted him constantly and freely, and that Mr. Hobart was on 
intimate personal and official terms with the members of the cabinet, 
while also exercising a great deal of practical influence among the 
Senators, over whose deliberations it was his function to preside. It 
will be remembered that Mr. Roosevelt was the speaker at the Phila- 
delphia Convention who seconded Senator Foraker's nomination of 
President McKinley for another term, and that his speech was a fine 
tribute to Mr. McKinley's administration as well as a strong plea for 
Mr. McKinley's policies. Thus, it was perfectly well know^n that Mr. 
Roosevelt was in accord with the President who had made him a 
high official in the Navy Department, and had afterward commis- 
sioned him to high rank in the army. Furthermore, it is no secret 
that President McKinley, on his own part, sent word to Mr. Roose- 
velt, as Vice-Presidential nominee, that he would treat him exactly as 
he had treated Mr. Hobart, in case the ticket should be elected. 
Thus, i\Ir. Roosevelt went to Washington as Vice-President to enjoy 
the full confidence of Mr. McKinley in all matters of public impor- 
tance, and also to enjoy the friendship and confidence of all the mem- 
bers of the Cabinet. These were the circumstances under which Mr. 
Roosevelt's action, when the great emergency arose, was not one 
about which he had any occasion to falter or hesitate. The con- 
ditions were totally unlike those that had existed when former Presi- 
dents had died in ofhce, and they were diametrically opposite to those 
at the time of President Garfield's assassination, when the Vice- 
President was one of the leaders in an intense factional fight against 
the political plans and methods of the administration. j\Ir. Roose- 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



341 



velt's relations with the administration were thus so normal and ap- 
propriate that there was every reason to expect that in the case of 
Mr. McKinley's death he would take up the reins of administration 
exactly where they were laid down, and proceed as best he could with 
existing instrumentalities. 

He went to Washington as Vice-President and for the little while 
that he remained in the Capitol in his official capacity he enjoyed the 
friendship of Mr. McKinley to a very close degree. He was a far 
younger man than the President. Said a friend: ''He goes to Wash- 
ington to take a position under the government not of his choosing, 
but which he accepts because the people would have it so." But he 
w'as fully equipped for any constitutional duties that might be re- 
quired of him, and he was a well-known man who was not only city- 
born and city-bred, but for over two hundred years his family had 
been intimately connected with the commercial and the political de- 
velopment of New York, whose historian he himself has been. His 
father, whose name he bears and whose sturdy good-citizenship he 
justly reveres, was prominent in the city's life. What this city ex- 
perience has meant for him is not as well known as it should be, but 
Mr. Roosevelt himself expressed it with emphasis in the preface to his 
volume on New York in the ''Historic Towns Series." He says: 

In speaking to my own countrymen, there is one point upon which 
I wish to lay especial stress; that is, the necessity for a feeling of 
broad,*" radical, and intense Americanism, if good work is to be done 
in any direction. Above all, the one essential for success in any 
political movement which is to do lasting good, is that our citizens 
should act as Americans; not as Americans with a prefix and qualifi- 
cation, — not as Irish-Americans, German-Americans, native Ameri- 
cans, — but as Americans pure and simple. It is an outrage for a man 
to drag foreign politics into our contests, and vote as an Irishman or 
German or other foreigner, as the case may be; and there is no worse 



342 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



citizen than the professional Irish dynamiter or German anarchist, 
because of his attitude toward our social and political life, not to 
mention his efforts to embroil us with foreign powers. But it is no 
less an outrage to discriminate against one who has become an 
American in good faith merely because of his creed or birthplace. 
Every man wdio has gone into practical politics knows well enough 
that if he joins good men and fights those w^ho are evil he can pay no 
heed to lines of division drawn according to race and religion. * * 
The most important lesson taught by the history of New York City 
is the lesson of Americanism, — the lesson that he among us who 
wishes to win honor in our life, and to play his part honestly and man- 
fully, must be indeed an American in spirit and purpose, in heart and 
thought and deed. 

Mr. Roosevelt's city cosmopolitanism long since became national. 
Educated at Harvard University; plunging into the study of the law; 
serving a city district for three terms in the lower house of the State 
Legislature; delegate-at-large to his party's national convention at 
tw^enty-five; living an out-of-door life on a ranch on the Little 
Missouri; traveling, hunting, and climbing in his vacations; studying 
and writing works of history and books on sport, on politics, and on 
literature; serving as civil-service commissioner at Washington, presi- 
dent of the poHce commission in New York, and returning to Wash- 
ington as Assistant Secretary of the Navy; volunteering for service 
in the Spanish War, and serving brilHantly; taking up the arduous and 
responsible duties of the governorship of the great commonwealth 
of New York for two years, and finding time w^hile discharging them 
well to write a critical interpretation of Cromwell's career and a 
history of his regiment organized for the Spanish War; and finally 
presiding for a few days over the Senate of the United States as Vice- 
President — surely here is a training such as America alone can give 
to ''one of Plutarch's men," 



f 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



343 



What other statesman or what other man of letters could have 
written, or would have been asked to write, sympathetic studies of 
two such typical but widely different Americans as bluff old Tom 
Benton, of Missouri, and the polished Gouverneur Morris, of New 
York? Theodore Roosevelt alone, of all living Americans, could 
penetrate to the common secret of the greatness of these contrasting 
types, and could reveal it. His life in New York and his college train- 
ing at Harvard had brought him in touch with the characteristics and 
the environment of Morris, while his travels in the West, his life on 
the plains, and his insight into frontier standards and conditions re- 
vealed to him those of Benton. 

The Vice-President took to Washin-gton with him a well-known 
reputation as an author. Had he done nothing but contribute to the 
field of literature the ambitious list of works given below, he would be 
entitled to rank with the noted men of the period, but at every point 
of contact with life he has equally distinguished himself. The ac- 
companying list gives all his books now in print and in the order 
of their publication. 

"The Naval War of 1812." 

"Hunting Trips of a Ranchman." 

"Life of Thomas Hart Benton." (American Statesmen Series.) 
"Gouverneur Morris." (American Statesmen Series.) 
"Ranch Life and the*Hunting Trail." 
"Winning of the West." 4 vols. 
■'New York." (Historic Towns.) 

"Wilderness Hunter: Account of the Big Game of the United 
States." 

(Roosevelt and Grinnell eds.). 

"American Big Game Hunting." (Book of the Boone and Crockett 
Club.) 

"Hero Tales From American History." (Lodge and Roosevelt). 



3i4 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



"Hunting in Many Lands." (Book of the Boone and Crockett 
Club.) 

''American Ideals and Other Essays, Social and Political." 
(Grinnell and Roosevelt eds.). 

"Trail and Campfire." (Book of the Boone and Crockett Club.) 
"The Rough Riders." 
"Oliver Cromwell." 
"Tlie Strenuous Life." 

The country was at peace, its prosperity was phenomenal, and it 
would seem that after all the new Vice-President would have little 
to do until after the warm weather of the Summer. He might go to 
Oyster Bay and join his family there, or he might go West where he 
so often went for a breathing spell after the arduous life of a political 
excitement. And surely the campaign for McKinley had been 
arduous, and such as no man without his vast reserve force of health, 
gained on the prairies and the mountains, could have stood. The 
winter would come soon enough, when, his books unopened, his 
domestic life interrupted, he should be in the Capitol. The ist of 
September found him in Minnesota, where he had promised to make 
an address at the State Fair. On the morrow this address was made. 
Its incisiveness, its direct eloquence, and its energetic force are thor- 
oughly characteristic of him, while its high ethical spirit and political 
recommendations will attract desert' ed attention. He says: 

"In his admirable series of studies of twentieth-centur}^ problems. 
Dr. Lyman Abbott has pointed out that we are a nation of pioneers; 
that the first colonists to our shores were pioneers, and that pioneers 
selected out from among the descendants of these early pioneers, 
mingled with others selected afresh from the Old World, pushed 
westward into the wilderness, and laid the foundations for new com- 
monwealths. They were men of hope and expectation, of enterprise 
and energy; for the men of dull content, or more, dull despair, had 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



345 



no part in the great movement into and across the New World. Our 
country has been populated by pioneers, and therefore it has in it 
more energy, more enterprise, more expansive power, than any other 
in the wide world. 

"You w^hom I am now addressing stand, for the most part, but one 
generation removed from these pioneers. You are typical Americans, 
for you have done the great, the characteristic, the typical, work of 
our American life. In making homes and carving out careers for 
yourselves and your children, you have built up this State; through- 
out our history the success of the homemaker has been but another 
name for the upbuilding of the nation. The men who with axe in the 
forest and pick in the mountains and plow on the prairies pushed to 
completion the dominion of our people over the American wilderness 
have given the definite shape to our nation. They have shown the 
qualities of daring, endurance, and farsightedness, of eager desire for 
victory and stubborn refusal to accept defeat, which go to make up 
the essential manliness of the American character. Above all, they 
have recognized in practical form the fundamental law of success in 
American life — the law of worthy work, the law of high, resolute en- 
deavor. We have but little room among our people for the timid, 
the irresolute, and the idle, and it is no less true that there is scant 
room in the world at large for the nation with mighty thews that dares 
not to be great. 

''Surely, in speaking to the sons of men who actually did the rough 
and hard and infinitely glorious work of making the great Northwest 
what it now is, I need hardly insist upon the righteousness of this 
doctrine. In your own vigorous lives you show by every act how 
scant is your patience with those who do not see in the life of effort 
the Hfe supremely worth living. Sometimes we hear those who do not 
work spoken of wnth envy. Surely the willfully idle need arouse in 



346 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



the breast of a healthy man no emotion stronger than that of con- 
tempt — at the outside, no emotion stronger than angry contempt. 

'The feeling of envy would have in it an admission o{ inferiority 
on our part, to which the men who know not the sterner joys of life 
are not entitled. Poverty is a bitter thing, but it is not as bitter as the 
existence of restless vacuity and physical, moral, and intellectual 
fiabbiness to which those doom themselves who elect to spend all 
their years in that vainest of all vain pursuits — the pursuit of mere 
pleasure as a sufficient end in itself. The vs^Ufully idle man, like the 
willfully barren woman, has no place in a sane, healthy, and vigorous 
community. Moreover, the gross and hideous selfishness for which 
each stands defeats even its own miserable aims. Exactly as infinitely 
the happiest woman is she who has borne and brought up many 
healthy children, so infinitely the happiest man is he who has toiled 
hard and successfully in his life-work. The work may be done in a 
thousand different ways, — with the brain or the hands, in the study, 
the field, or the w^orkshop; if it is honest work, honestly done and well 
worth doing, that is all wt have a right to ask. Every father and 
mother here, if they are wise, will bring up their children, not to shirk 
difficulties, but to meet them and overcome them; not to strive after 
a life of ignoble ease, but to strive to do their duty, first to themselves 
and their families, and then to the whole State; and this duty must 
inevitably take the shape of work in some form or other. You, the 
sons of pioneers, if you are true to your ancestry, must make your 
lives as worthy as they made theirs. They sought for true success, 
and therefore they did not seek ease. They knew that success comes 
only to those w^ho lead the life of endeavor. 

'Tt seems to me that the simple acceptance of this fundamental fact 
of American life, this acknowledgment that the law of work is the 
fundamental law of our being, will help us to start aright in facing 
not a few of the problems that confront us from without and from 




LIEUT. COLONEIv ROOSEVELT AND CAPT. DOWNES 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 349 

within. As regards internal affairs, it should teach us the prime need 
of remembering that, after all has been said and done, the chief factor 
in any man's success or failure must be his own character; that is, 
the sum of his common sense, his courage, his virile energy and 
capacity. Nothing can take the place of this individual factor. 

''I do not for a moment mean that much cannot be done to supple- 
ment it. Besides each of us working individually, all of us have got 
to work together. We cannot possibly do our best work as a nation 
unless all of us know how to act in combination as well as how to act 
each individually for himself. The acting in combination can take 
many forms, but of course its most effective form must be when it 
comes in the shape of law; that is, of action by the community as a 
whole through the lawmaking body. 

"But it is not possible ever to insure prosperity merely by law. 
Something for good can be done by law, and a bad law can do an 
infinity o-f mischief; but, after all, the best law can only prevent wrong 
and injustice, and give to the thrifty, the farseeing, and the hard- 
working a chance to exercise to the best advantage their special and 
pecuHar abilities. No hard-and-fast rule can be laid down as to where 
our legislation shall stop in interfering between man and man, be- 
tween interest and interest. All that can be said is that it is highly 
undesirable, on the one hand, to weaken individual initiative, and on 
the other hand, that in a constantly increasing number of cases we 
shall find it necessary in the future to shackle cunning as in the past 
we have shackled force. 

*'It is not only highly desirable, but necessary, that there should 
be legislation which shall carefully shield the interests of wage- 
workers, and which shall discriminate in favor of the honest and 
humane employer by removing the disadvantages under which he 
stands when compared with unscrupulous competitors who have no 
conscience and will do right only under fear of. punishment. 



350 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



''Nor can legislation stop only with what are termed labor ques- 
tions. The vast individual and corporate fortunes, the vast com- 
binations of capital, which have marked the development of our in- 
dustrial system, create new conditions, and necessitate a change from 
the old attitude of the State and the nation toward property. 

'Tt is probably true that the large majority of the fortunes that now 
exist in this country have been amassed, not by injuring our people, 
but as an incident to the conferring of great benefits upon the com- 
munity; and this no matter what may have been the conscious pur- 
pose of those amassing them. There is but the scantiest justification 
for most of the outcry against the men of wealth as such, and it ought 
to be unnecessary to state that any appeal which directly or indirectly 
leads to suspicion and hatred among ourselves, which tends to limit 
/ opportunity and therefore to shut the door of success against poor 
men of talent, and finally, v;hich entails the possibility of lawlessness 
V and violence, is an attack upon the fundamental properties of Ameri- 
/ can citizenship. Our interests are at bottom common; in the long 
' run, we go up or go down together. Yet more and more it is evident 
that the State, and if necessary the nation, has got to possess the 
right of supervision and control as regards the great corporations, 
which are its creatures; particularly as regards the great business 
combinations, which derive a portion of their importance from the 
existence of some monopolistic tendency. The right should be exer- 
cised with caution and self-restraint; but it should exist, so that it may 
be invoked if the need arise. 

"So much for our duties, each to himself and each to his neighbor, 
within the limits of our own country. But our country, as it strides 
forvvard with ever-increasing rapidity to a foremost place among the 
world powers, must necessarily find, more and more, that it has world 
duties also. There are excellent people who believe that we can 
shirk those duties and yet retain our self-respect; but these good 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



351 



people are in error. Other good people seek to deter us from tread- 
ing the path of hard but lofty duty by bidding us remember that all 
nations that have achieved greatness, that have expanded and played 
their part as world powers, have in the end passed away. So they 
have, and so have all others. 

''The weak and the stationary have vanished as surely as, and more 
rapidly than, those whose citizens felt within them the life that impels 
generous souls to great and noble efifort. This is another way of 
stating the universal law of death, which is itself part of the universal 
law of life. The man who works, the man vv'ho does great deeds, in 
the end dies as surely as the veriest idler who cumbers the earth's 
surface; but he leaves behind him the great fact that he has done his 
work well. So it is with nations. While the nation that has dared to ^ 
be great, that has had the will and the power to change the destiny of ' 
the ages, in the end must die, yet no less surely the nation that has 
played the part of the weakling must also die; and whereas the nation ' 
that has done nothing leaves nothing behind it, the nation that has 
done a great work really continues, though in changed form, for ' 
evermore. The Roman has passed away, exactly as all nations of 
antiquity which did not expand when he expanded have passed 
away; but their very memory has vanished, while he himself is still a 
living force throughout the wide world in our entire civilization of 
to-day, and will so continue through countless generations, through 
untold ages. 

'Tt is because we believe with all our heart and soul in the great- 
ness of this country, because we feel the thrill of hardy life in our 
veins, and are confident that to us is given the privilege of playing a 
leading part in the century that has just opened, that we hail with 
eager delight the opportunity to do Avhatever task Providence may 
allot us. We admit with all sincerity that our first duty is within our 
own household; that we must not merely talk, but act, in favor of 



352 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



cleanliness and decency and righteousness, in all political, social, and 
civic matters. No prosperity and no glory can save a nation that is 
rotten at heart. We must ever keep the core of our national being 
sound, and see to it that not only our citizens in private life, but 
above all, our statesmen in public life, practise the old commonplace 
virtues which from time immemorial have lain at the root of all true 
national well-being. 

"Yet, while this is our first duty, it is not our whole duty. Exactly 
as each man, while doing first his duty to his wife and the children 
within his home, must yet, if he hopes to amount to much, strive 
mightily in the world outside his home, so our nation, while first of 
all seeing to its own domestic well-being, must not shrink from play- 
ing its part among the great nations without. 

*'Our duty may take many forms in the future, as it has taken 
many forms in the past. Nor is it possible to lay down a hard-and-fast 
rule for all cases. We must ever face the fact of our shifting national 
needs, of the always changing opportunities that present themselves. 
But we may be certain of one thing: whether we wish it or not, we 
cannot avoid hereafter having duties to do in the face of other nations. 
All that we can do is to settle whether we shall perform these duties 
well or ill. 

"Right here let me make as vigorous a plea as I know how in - 
favor of saying nothing that we do not mean, and of acting without 
hesitation up to whatever wc say. A good many of you are probably 
acquainted with the old proverb, 'Speak softly and carry a big stick — 
you will go far.' If a man continually blusters, if he lacks civility, a 
big stick will not save him from trouble; and neither will speaking 
softly avail, if back of the softness there does not lie strength, power. 
In private life there are few beings more obnoxious than the man who 
is always loudly boasting; and if the boaster is not prepared to back 
up his words, his position becomes absolutely contemptible. So it 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



353 



is with the nation. It is both fooHsh and undignified to indulge in 
undue self-glorification, and, above all, in loose-tongued denunciation 
of other peoples. Whenever on any point we come in contact with 
a foreign power, I hope that we shall always strive to speak cour- 
teously and respectfully of that foreign power. Let us make it evi- 
dent that we intend to do justice. Then let us make it equally evident 
that w^e will not tolerate injustice being done us in return. Let us 
further make it evident that we use no words which we are not pre- 
pared to back up with deeds, and that while our speech is always 
moderate, we are ready and willing to make it good. Such an atti- 
tude will be the surest possible guarantee of that self-respecting peace 
the attainment of which is and must ever be the prime aim of a self- 
governing people. 

'This is the attitude we should take as regards the Monroe 
Doctrine. There is not the least need of blustering about it. Still 
less should it be used as a pretext for our own aggrandizement at the 
expense of any other American state. But, most emphatically, we 
must make it evident that we intend on this point ever to maintain 
the old American position. Indeed, it is hard to understand how any 
man can take any other position now" that we are all looking forward 
to the building of the isthmian canal. The Monroe Doctrine is not 
international law, but there is no necessity that it should be. 

''All that is needful is that it should continue to be a cardinal fea- 
ture of American policy on this continent; and the Spanish-American 
states should, in their own interests, champion it as strongly as we do. 
We do not by this doctrine intend to sanction any policy of aggres- 
sion by one American commonwealth at the expense of any other, 
nor any policy of commercial discrimination against any foreign 
power whatsoever. Commercially, as far as this doctrine is con- 
cerned, all we wish is a fair field and no favor; but if we are wise we 
shall strenuously insist that under no pretext whatsoever shall there 



354 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



be any territorial aggrandizement on American soil by any European 
power, and this no matter what form the territorial aggrandizement 
may take. 

''We most earnestly hope and believe that the chance of our having 
any hostile military complication with any foreign power is very small. 
But that there will come a strain, a jar here and there, from com- 
mercial and agricultural — that is, from industrial — competition, is 
almost inevitable. Here again we have got to remember that our first 
duty is to our own people; and yet that we can best get justice by 
doing justice. AVe must continue the policy that has been so bril- 
liantly successful in the past, and so shape our economic system as to 
give every advantage to the skill, energy^, and intelligence of our 
farmers, merchants, manufacturers, and wage-workers; and yet we 
must also remember, in dealing with other nations, that benefits must 
be given where benefits are sought. It is not possible to dogmatize 
as to the exact way of attaining this end, for the exact conditions can- 
not be foretold. In the long run, one of our prime needs is stabiHty 
and continuity of economic policy; and yet, through treaty or by 
direct legislation, it may, at least in certain cases, become advanta- 
geous to supplement our present policy by a system of reciprocal 
benefit and obligation. 

''Throughout a large part of our national career our history has 
been one of expansion, the expansion being of different kinds at 
different times. This explanation is not a matter of regret, but of 
price. It is vain to tell a people as masterful as ours that the spirit of 
enterprise is not safe. The true American has never feared to run 
risks Avhen the prize to be won was of sufficient value. No nation 
capable of self-government, and of developing by its own efforts a 
sane and orderly civilization, no matter how small it may be, has any- 
thing to fear from us. 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



855 



''Our dealings with Cuba illustrate this, and should be forever a 
subject of just national pride. We speak in no spirit of arrogance 
when we state as a simple historic fact that never in recent times has 
any great nation acted with such disinterestedness as we have shown 
in Cuba. We freed the island from the Spanish yoke. We then 
earnestly did our best to help the Cubans in the establishment of free 
education, of law and order, of material prosperity, of the cleanliness 
necessary to sanitary well-being in their great cities. We did all this 
at great expense of treasure, at some expense of life, and now we are 
establishing them in a free and independent commonwealth, and have 
asked in return nothing whatever save that at no time shall their 
independence be prostituted to the advantage of some foreign rival 
of ours, or so as to menace our well-being. To have failed to ask this 
would have amounted to national stultification on our part. 

"In the Philippines we have brought peace, and w^e are at this 
moment giving them such freedom and self-government as they could 
never under any conceivable conditions have obtained had we turned 
them loose to sink into a welter of blood and confusion, or to become 
the prey of some strong tyranny without or within. The bare recital 
of the facts is sufficient to show that we did our duty, — and what 
prouder title to honor can a nation have than to have done its duty? 
We have done our duty to ourselves, and w^e have done the higher 
duty of promoting the civilization of mankind. 

"The first essential of civiHzation is law. Anarchy is simply the 
handmaiden and forerunner of tyranny and despotism. Law and 
/'•'order enforced by justice and by strength lie at the foundation of 
civilization. Law must be based upon justice, else it cannot stand, 
and it must be enforced with resolute firmness, because weakness in 
enforcing it means in the end that there is no justice and no law — 
nothing but the rule of disorderly and unscrupulous strength. With- 
out the habit of orderly obedience to the law, without the stern en- 
forcement of the laws at the expense of those who defiantly resist 



356 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



them, there can be no possible progress, moral or material, in civili- 
zation. There can be no weakening of the law-abiding spirit at home 
if we are permanently to succeed, and just as little can we afford to 
show weakness abroad. Lawlessness and anarchy were put down in 
the Philippines as a prerequisite to inducing the reign of justice. 

"Barbarism has and can have no place in a civilized world. It is 
our duty toward the people living in barbarism to see that they are 
freed from their chains, and we can only free them by destroying 
barbarism itself. The missionary, the merchant, and the soldier may 
each have to play a part in this destruction, and in the consequent 
uplifting of the people. Exactly as it is the duty of a civilized power 
scrupulously to respect the rights of all weaker civilized powers and 
gladly to help those who are struggling toward civilization, so it is 
its duty to put down savagery and barbarism. As in such a work 
human instruments must be used, and as human instruments are im- 
perfect, this means that at times there will be injustices — that at times 
merchant, or soldier, or even missionary, may do wTong. 

''Let us instantly condemn and rectify such wrong when it occurs, 
and, if possible, punish the wrongdoer. But, shame, thrice shame, 
to us if we are so foolish as to make such occasional wrongdoing an 
excuse for failing to perform a great and righteous task. Not only in 
our own land, but throughout the world, throughout all history, the 
advance of civilization has been of incalculable benefit to mankind, 
and those through whom it has advanced deserve the higher honor. 
All honor to the missionary, all honor to the soldier, all honor to the 
merchant, who now in our own day have done so much to bring light 
into the world's dark places. 

*'Let me insist again, for fear of possible misconstruction, upon the 
fact that our duty is two-fold, and that we must raise others while we 
are benefiting ourselves. In bringing order to the Philippines, our' 
soldiers added a new page to the honor-roll of American history, and 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



359 



they incalculably benefited the islanders themselves. Under the wise 
administration of Governor Taft, the islands now enjoy a peace and 
liberty of which they have hitherto never even dreamed. But this 
peace and liberty under the law must be supplemented by material, 
by industrial, development. Every encouragement should be given 
to their commercial development, to the introduction of American 
industries and products; not merely because this will be a good thing 
for our people, but infinitely more because it will be of incalculable 
benefit to the people of the Philippines. 

"We shall make mistakes; and if we let these mistakes frighten 
us from work, we shall show ourselves weaklings. Half a century 
ago, Minnesota and the two Dakotas were Indian hunting-grounds. 
We committed plenty of blunders, and now and then worse than 
blunders, in our deahngs with the Indians. But who does not admit 
at the present day that we were right in wresting from barbarism 
and adding to civilization the territory out of which we have made 
these beautiful States? And now we are civilizing the Indian and 
putting him on a level to which he could never have attained under 
the old conditions. 

"In the Philippines, let us remember that the spirit and not the 
mere form of government is the essential matter. The Tagals have 
a hundredfold the freedom under us that they would have if we had 
abandoned the islands. We are not trying to subjugate a people, — ■ 
we are trying to develop them and make them a law-abiding, in- 
dustrious, and educated people, and, we hope, ultimately, a self- 
governing people. In short, in the work we have done, we are but 
carrying out the true principles of our democracy. We work in a 
spirit of self-respect for ourselves and of good-will toward others; in 
a spirit of love for and of infinite faith in mankind. We do not blindly 
refuse to face the evils that exist or the shortcomings inherent in 
humanity; but across blunderings and shirking, across selfishness and 



360 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



meanness of motive, across shortsightedness and cowardice, we gaze 
steadfastly toward the far horizon of golden triumph. 

''If you will study our past history as a nation, you will see we have 
made many blunders and have been guilty of many shortcomings, and 
yet that we have always in the end come out victorious because we 
have refused to be daunted by blunders and defeats — have recognized 
them, but have persevered in spite of them. So it must be in the 
future. We gird up our loins as a nation with the stern purpose to 
play our part manfully in winning the ultimate triumph; and therefore 
we turn scornfully aside from the paths of mere ease and idleness, 
and Avith unfaltering steps tread the rough road of endeavor, smiting 
down the wrong and battling for the right as Greatheart smote and 
battled in Bunyan's immortal stor}\" 

This was to be the last public utterance of Colonel Roosevelt as 
Vice-President of the United States. Only five days after it had been 
delivered the electric current sprang to every part of the globe to tell 
the world a terrible fact — President McKinley had been shot! 



CHAPTER XVIIL 



President McKinley at Buffalo — At the Zenith of His Fame— His Popularity — 
His Hopes — The Address at the Pan-American Exposition — A Famous Speech — 

A Farewell Benediction — At Niagara Falls — The Reception at the Exposi- 
tion, September 7tli — "The President is Shot!" — Forgiving his Assassin — Hopes 

of Recovery — A Turn for the Worse^ — "It is God's Way" — Last Scenes — 
The Whole World Anxious — The End not Far Off — September 14th — President 

McKinley is Dead! 

PRESIDENT McKINLEY was in excellent health and spirits 
when he arrived in Buffalo, September 4th, tO' visit the Pan- 
American Exposition. For a month he had been at his old 
home in Canton, Ohio, enjoying a rest from official cares. He had 
walked the streets of Canton with friends, and visited his farm a few 
miles distant and was happy in throwing off as far as possible the 
consciousness of being President, and was once again a simple Ameri- 
can gentleman. His wife had recovered from an illness which carried 
her to the very portals of the grave; she was now stronger than she 
had been for several years. His own health was most excellent; the 
strain and stress of two Presidential campaigns, and of nearly four 
years of unremitting toil in the executive chair — probably the most 
trying post to be found in all the world — had left no marks upon him. 
All his family and private affairs were in a most desirable condition. 
Thanks to economy and good management, he had recovered from 
the financial disaster which a few years before left him bankrupt, and 
had now a modest but sufficient competency. He was able to look 
forward with fond anticipations to his retirement from public life, 
and could see therein the probability of many years of quiet, dignified 
happiness. 

361 



362 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



When the President went to Buffalo he was, as a public man, at the 
zenith of his fame. He felt that he had had great work to do, and 
that he had done it well. He knew the estimate the world was 
placing upon him and his achievements, and he w^as content there- 
with. He had grown amazingly since he first took hold of the reins 
of government, and he was conscious and properly proud of his 
growth. He knew that he had piloted the country through a stormy 
period, and had piloted it so well that even his political opponents 
had little criticism to offer. He was aware that more than any other 
President since Washington he had softened the rancor ot party 
opposition; that he was liked and trusted by all the people; that the 
last remnants of sectionalism had disappeared under his gentle minis- 
trations; that the people were more united in spirit, in good-will, in 
optimistic outlook, than they had ever been before. These things the 
President often spoke of to his intimate friends; he found keen satis- 
faction in them, — not in any egostic or vain spirit, but in the con- 
faction in them, — not in any egostistic or vain spirit, but in the con- 
sciousness of having done much for his country, for its material pros- 
perity, for the uplifting of his people to a higher and better view. He 
was prouder of this than of any of his other achievements. 

He knew, too, that the world's estimate of him had changed. He 
knew that he had grown abroad as well as at home. Though by 
instinct and training his horizon had in earlier years been virtually 
bordered by the frontiers of the United States, though domestic 
affairs had then engrossed his thoughts, the Presidency had broad- 
ened him. Circumstances had made his administration a world 
activity instead of a purely domestic concern. He had met, and met 
successfully, all these problems coming from without. He had risen 
to his opportunities. He had done as well in the international as in 
the purely national field. He had failed in nothing. He had im- 
pressed himself so favorably upon the nations that their respect for 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



363 



him as man and leader, their respect for the Government and tlie 
people whose spokesman he was, had visibly heightened. Mr. Mc- 
Kinley found natural and proper satisfaction in the consciousness that 
he had been able to take this high place in the world's esteem, that 
the earlier estimate of him as a man of single idea and of wholly 
insular view had given way to a broader appreciation. He was 
especially pleased with the knowledge that in one international 
episode — that of China — he and his Secretary of State, Mr. Hay, had 
been able to pitch the world's concert in a higher key, and to make 
the United States the moral leader of the nations. 

Thus, Mr. McKinley went to Buffalo in a most happy frame of 
mind. He was not unaware of his popularity, which was phenomenal 
in its character, and he was human enough to appreciate it; for the 
nation had expressed its plaudits without regard to party lines. He 
was most glad of these evidences that the masses of the population 
had responded to his teachings, and his examples that kindliness and 
behef in America and Americans, hopefulness and work, behef in 
meeting responsibilities in whatever quarter of the world they might 
arise, of a growing nation that must rise to its opportunities as to its 
duties, had fallen upon fertile soil. So far as his individual outlook 
w^as concerned, he felt a new confidence. He had only entered upon 
his second term. He had a united people behind him. He had 
voluntarily thrust aside once for all the temptation to stand for a 
third term. He had so cleared the way that during the three and a 
half years of the Presidency which remained to him he could enter 
upon new^ efforts to promote the prosperity and add to the strength 
of his country without subjecting himself to the slightest suspicion of 
self-seeking. At last, as he often remarked to his friends, he was to 
be President as he wanted to be. He had now^ no need of fearing foe 
or of rewarding friends. He Avas independent, unrestrained, free- 
handed. Already he was laying plans for the future. This visit to the 



364 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo he had intended to mark as 
something more than a mere hoHday. 

President McKinley and his party were received at Buffalo with 
every demonstration of popular regard. He lost no time in speaking 
the words which he had come to speak. He trusted the people and 
he believed they had the right to know in advance the intentions of 
their leaders. Said Mr. McKinley, September 5th: — 

''President Milburn, Director-General B:ichanan, Commissioners., 
Ladies and Gentlemen: — I am glad to be again in the city of Buffalo 
and exchange greetings with her people, to whose generous hospi- 
tality I am not a stranger, and with whose good-will I have been 
repeatedly and signally honored. To-day, I have additional satis- 
faction in meeting and giving welcome to the foreign representatives 
assembled here, whose presence and participation in this e-xposition 
have contributed in so marked a degree to its interest and success. 
To the commissioners of the Dominion of Canada and the British 
colonies, the French colonies, the republics of Mexico and of Central 
and South America, and the commissioners of Cuba and Porto Rico, 
who share with us in this undertaking, we give the hand of fellowship 
and felicitate with them upon the triumphs of art, science, education, 
and manufacture which the old has bequeathed to the new century. 

Expositions are the timekeepers of progress. They record the 
world's advancement. They stimulate the energy, enterprise, and 
intellect of the people, and quicken human genius. They go into the 
home. They broaden and brighten the daily life of the people. They 
broaden and brighten the daily life of the people. They open mighty 
open mighty storehouses of information to the student. Every 
exposition, great or small, has helped to some onward step. Com- 
parison of ideas is always educational, and as such instructs the brain 
and hand of man. Friendly rivalry follows, which is the spur to 
industrial improvement, the inspiration to useful invention and to 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



365 



high endeavor in all departments of human activity. It exacts a 
study of the wants, comforts, and even the whims of the people, and 
recognizes the efficacy of high quality and new prices to win their 
favor. The quest for trade is an incentive to men of business to 
devise, invent, improve, and economize in the cost of production. 
Business life, whether among ourselves or wath other people, is ever 
a sharp struggle for success. It will be none the less so in the future. 
Without competition we would be clinging to the clumsy and anti- 
quated processes of farming and manufacture and the methods of 
business of long ago, and the twentieth would be no further advanced 
than the eighteenth century. But though commercial competitors 
we are, commercial enemies we must not be. 

'The Pan-American Exposition has done its w^ork thoroughly, pre- 
senting in its exhibits evidences of the highest skill, and illustrating 
the progress of the human family in the Western hemisphere. This 
portion of the earth has no cause for humilation for the part it has 
performed in the march of civilization. It has not accomplished 
everything; far from it. It has simply done its best; and without 
vanity or boastfulness, and recognizing the manifold achievements of 
others, it mvites the friendly rivalry of all the powers in the peaceful 
pursuits of trade and commerce, and will cooperate with all in ad- 
vancing the highest and best interests of humanity. The wisdom and 
energy of all the nations are none too g"reat for the world's work. 
The success of art, science, industry, and invention is an international 
asset, and a common glory. 

"After all, how near one to the other is every part of the world! 
Modern inventions have brought into close relation widely separated 
peoples and made them better acquainted. Geographic and political 
divisions will continue to exist, but distances have been effaced. 
Swift ships and fast trains are becoming cosmopolitan. They invade 



366 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



fields which a few years ago were impenetrable. The world's prod- 
ucts are exchanged as never before, and with increasing transporta- 
tion facilities come increasing knowledge and larger trade. Prices are 
fixed with mathematical precision by supply and demand. The 
world's selling prices are regulated by market and crop reports. W'e 
travel greater distances in a shorter space of time and with more ease 
than was ever dreamed of by the fathers. Isolation is no longer 
possible or desirable. The same important news is read, though in 
different languages, the same day in all Christendom. The telegraph 
keeps us advised of what is occurring everywhere, and the press fore- 
shadows, with more or less accuracy, the plans and purposes of the 
nations. ^Market prices of products and of securities are hourly 
known in every commercial mart, and the investments of the people 
extend bevond their own national boundaries into the remotest parts 
of the earth. \'ast transactions are conducted, and international ex- 
changes are made, by the tick of the cable. Every event of interest is 
immediately bulletined. The c_[uick gathering and transmission of 
news, like rapid transit, are of recent origin, and are only made pos- 
sible by the genius of the inventor and the courage of the investor. It 
took a special messenger of the Government, with every facility 
known at the time for rapid travel,, nineteen days to go from the city 
of AA'ashington to Xew Orleans with a message to General Jackson 
that the war with England had ceased and a treaty of peace had been 
signed. How diflerent now! 

"A\'e reached General IMiles in Porto Rico by cable, and he was 
able, through the military telegraph, to stop his army on the firing 
line with the message that the United States and Spain had signed a 
protocol suspending hostilities. We knew almost instantly of the 
first shots fired at Santiago, and the subsequent surrender of the 
Spanish forces was known at AA'ashington within less than an hour of 
its cou-summation. The first ship of Cervera's fleet had hardly 



Copyright George Grantham Baix 
CAMPAIGNING IN 1900— MR. ROOSEVEI.T SPEAKING 
IN THE OPEN AIR 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



369 



emerged from that historic harbor when the fact was flashed to our 
capital, and the swift destruction that followed was announced im- 
mediately through the wonderful medium of telegraphy. So accus- 
tomed are we to safe and easy communication with distant lands that 
its tempeorary interruption, even in ordinary times, results in loss and 
inconvenience. We shall never forget the days of anxious waiting 
and awful suspense when no information was permitted to be sent 
from Peking, and the diplomatic representatives of the nations in 
China, cut off from all communication, inside and outside of the 
w^alled capital, were surrounded by an angry and misguided mob that 
threatened their lives; nor the joy that thrilled the world when a 
single message from the Government of the United States brought, 
through our minister, the first news of the safety of the besieged 
diplomats. 

''At the beginning of the nineteenth century there was not a mile 
of steam railroad on the globe; now there are enough miles to make 
its circuit many times. Then there was not a line of electric telegraph; 
now we have a vast mileage traversing all lands and all seas. God 
and man have linked the nations together. No nation can longer 
be indifTerent to any other. And as we are brought more and more 
in touch with each other, the less occasion is there for misunderstand- 
ings, and the stronger the disposition, when we have differences, to 
adjust them in the court of arbitration, which is the noblest forum 
for the settlement of international disputes. 

"My fellow-citizens: Trade statistics indicate that this country is 
in a state of unexampled pro-sperity. The figures are almost appall- 
ing. They show^ that we are utilizing our fields and forests and mines, 
and that we are furnishing profitable employment to the millions of 
workingmen throughout the United States, bringing comfort and 
happiness to their homes, and making it possible to lay by savings for 
old age and disability. That all the people are participating in this 



370 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



great prosperity is seen in every American community, and shown by 
the enormous and unprecedented deposits in our savings-banks. 
Our duty is the care and security of these deposits, and their safe in- 
vestment demands the highest integrity and the best business ca- 
pacity of those in charge of these depositories of the people's earnings. 

''We have a vast and intricate business, built up through years of 
toil and struggle, in which every part of the country has its stake, 
which will not permit of either neglect or of undue selfishness. No 
narrow, sordid policy will subserve it. The greatest skill and wisdom 
on the part of manufacturers and producers will be required to hold 
and increase it. Our industrial enterprises, which have grown to such 
great proportions, affect the homes and occupations of the people 
and the welfare of the country. Our capacity to produce has de- 
veloped so enormously, and our products have so multiplied, that the 
problem of more markets requires our urgent and immediate at- 
tention. Only a broad and enlightened policy will keep what we 
have. No other policy will get more. In these times of marvelous 
business energy and gain we ought to be looking to the future, 
strengthening the weak places in our industrial and commercial 
systems, that we may be ready for any storm or strain. 

''By sensible trade arrangements which will not interrupt our home 
production, we shall extend the outlets for our increasing surplus. 

"A system which provides a mutual exchange of commodities is 
manifestly essential to the continued and healthful growth of our 
export trade. We must not repose in fancied security that we can 
forever sell everything and buy little or nothing. If such a thing were 
possible, it would not be best for us or for those with whom we deal. 
We should take from our customers such of their products as we can 
use without harm to our industries and labor. Reciprocity is the 
natural outgrowth of our wonderful industrial development, under 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



371 



the domestic policy now firmly established. What we produce be- 
yond our domestic consumption must have a vent abroad. The 
excess must be relieved through a foreign outlet, and we should sell 
everywhere we can and buy wherever the buying will enlarge our sales 
and productions, and thereby make a greater demand for home labor. 

''The period of exclusiveness is past. The expansion of our trade 
and commerce is the pressing problem. Commercial wars are un- 
profitable. A policy of good will and friendly trade relations will pre- 
vent reprisals. Reciprocity treaties are in harmony with the spirit of 
the times; measures of retaliation are not. 

'Tf perchance some of our tariffs are no longer needed, for revenue 
or to encourage and protect our industries at home, why should they 
not be employed to extend and promote our markets abroad? 

''Then, too, we have inadequate steamship service. New lines of 
steamers have already been put in commission between the Pacific 
coast ports of the United States and those of the western coasts of 
Mexico and Central and South America. These should be followed 
up with direct steamship lines between the eastern coast of the United 
States and South American ports. One of the needs of the times is 
direct commercial lines from our vast fields of production to the 
fields of consumption that we have but barely touched. Next in 
advantage to having the thing to sell is to have the convenience to 
carry it to the buyer. We must encourage our merchant marine. We 
must have more ships. They must be under the American flag, built 
and manned and owned by Americans. These will not only be profit- 
able in a commercial sense; they will be messengers of peace and 
amity wherever they go. We must build the isthmian canal, which 
wall unite the tw^o oceans and give a straight line of water communi- 
cation with the western coasts of Central and South America and 
Mexico. The construction of a Pacific cable cannot be longer post- 
poned. 



37^ 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



''In the furtherance of these objects of national interest and con- 
cern you are performing an important part. This Exposition would 
have touched the heart of that American statesman whose mind was 
ever alert and thought ever constant for a larger commerce and a 
truer fraternity of the republics of the new world. His broad Ameri- 
can spirit is felt and manifested here. He needs no identification to 
an assemblage of Americans anywhere, for the name of Blaine is 
inseparably associated with the Pan-American movement which finds 
this practical and substantial expression, and which we all hope will 
be firmly advanced by the Pan-American Congress that assembles 
this autumn in the capital of Mexico. The good work will go on. 
It cannot be stopped. These buildings will disappear; this creation of 
art and beauty and industry will perish from sight, but their influence 
will remain to 

" 'Make it live beyond its too short living, with praises and thanksgiving.' 

"Who can tell the new thoughts that have been awakened, the 
ambitions fired and the high achievements that will be wrought 
through this Exposition? Gentlemen, let us ever remember that our 
interest is in concord, no conflict, and that our real eminence rests in 
the victories of peace, not those of war. We hope that all who are 
represented here may be moved to higher and nobler effort for their 
own and the world's good, and that out of this city may come, not 
only greater commerce and trade for us all, but, more essential than 
these, relations of mutual respect, confidence and friendship which 
will deepen and endure. 

''Our earnest prayer is that God will graciously vouchsafe pros- 
perity, happiness and peace to all our neighbors, and like blessings 
to all the peoples and Powers of earth." 

So he delivered his famous Buffalo speech. It was heard around 
the world, and it roused the nations as it roused the American people. 
One expression of his caught the imagination of men — "God and 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



373 



man have linked the nations together. No nation can longer be in- 
different to. any other." This gospel of commercial friendliness and 
peaceful rivalry, this recognition of the golden rule in the relations of 
nations, coming from the lips of William McKinle}^, the former 
apostle of protection, naturally startled the many who did not know 
how rapidly and how splendidly his philosophy had broadened. The 
Buffalo address may be regarded as the farewell of William McKinley, 
a benediction on the people of the country he so well loved. 

The day after the delivery of the address, Friday, September 6th, 
the President visited Niagara Falls. His light was very bright that day; 
he was at peace with himself and all the world. He was planning to 
spend the following week with his friend, Senator Hanna, at Cleve- 
land. To this visit he looked forward with fond anticipation. At 
Mr. Hanna's house he was to meet a number of friends of whom he 
had seen little during these later years. Best of all, one or two be- 
tween whom and himself a small cloud of misunderstanding had arisen 
were now to take his hand again. There was to be complete recon- 
ciliation. Thoughts of these things were uppermost in his mind this 
day; he often spoke of them. His sweet nature was never sweeter 
than in these last hours of health and strength. His tenderness 
toward his wife was never better shown than during this holiday 
excursion. He was not content to view any of the beautiful scenery 
unless she were by his side. While on the inclined railway, going 
down into Niagara Gorge, Mr. McKinley turned every moment, with 
an anxious look upon his face, to learn if Mrs. McKinley was incon- 
venienced by the novel and somewhat startling descent. When 
assured that instead of being frightened she was greatly enjoying it, 
his eyes lighted with satisfaction, and then for the first time did he 
permit himself to gaze uninterruptedly at the beauties of nature all 
about him. 



874 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT 



This sixth day of September the President may not have been con- 
scious of the fact, but at this moment he was without doubt the best- 
beloved man in ah the world. The milHons who looked up to him 
with affection and trust vastly exceeded in number and excelled in 
devotion the millions who looked up to any other living- man. His 
power for good without doubt surpassed that of any of his con- 
temporaries in the leadership of thought and action among the 
nations. Yet at this moment there was lurking upon the Exposition 
grounds at Buffalo a man planning to strike down this lofty spirit. 

The special train from Niagara Falls arrived at the Exposition 
grounds about 3.30 o'clock. i\Irs. ^^IcKinley was sent away in a car- 
nage to the house of Mr. jMilburn, president of the Exposition, where 
the President and his wife were guests. Then the President, accom- 
panied by ^Ir. INIilbum, Secretary Cortelyou, and others, drove to the 
Temple of i\Iusic, where it had been arranged the President was to 
hold a public reception. Twenty thousand people were gathered in 
front of the building, and as they saw the well-known face they set 
up a mighty shout of welcome. The President bowed to right and 
left and smiled. Then the great organ in the Temple pealed forth 
the national air, and the throngs fell back from the entrance, that the 
President might pass. Inside, the building, a space had been cleared 
for the Presidential party; the people were permitted to enter one 
door, pass by the President, and emerge at the opposite side of the 
auditorium. Usually a secret-service agent is stationed by the Presi- 
dent's side when he receives the public, but on this occasion President 
A'lilburn stood at the President's left. Secretary Cortelyou was at his 
right, and a little to the rear. Opposite the President was Secret 
Service officer Ireland. Eight or ten feet away was Officer Foster. 
Vv hen all was ready, the line of people was permitted to move, each 
one pausing to shake the hand of the President. He beamed upon 
them all in his courtly way. A\'hen one stranger timidly permitted 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



375 



himself to be pushed along without a greeting, the President called 
out, smilingly, ''Hold on, there; give me your hand." ]\Ir. ]\IcKinley 
would never permit any one to go past him without a handshake. He 
was particularly gracious to the children and to timid women. Here, 
as we have often seen him in AA^ashington and elsewhere, he patted 
little girls or boys on the head or cheelc and smiled at them in his 
sweet way. A woman and a little girl had just passed, and were look- 
ing back at the President, proud of the gracious manner in which he 
had greeted them. Next came a tall, powerful negro named Parker. 
After Parker, a slight, boyish figure, a face bearing marks of foreign 
descent, a smooth, youthful face, with nothing sinister to be detected 
in it. No one had suspected this innocent-looking boy of a murderous 
purpose. He had his right hand bound up in a handkerchief, and this 
had been noticed by both of the secret-service men as well as by 
others. But the appearance in a reception line of men with wounded 
and bandaged hands is not uncommon. In fact, one had already 
passed along the line. ^lany men carried handkerchiefs in their 
hands, for the day was warm. 

So this youth approached. He was met with a smile. The Presi- 
dent held out his hand, but it was not grasped. Supporting his 
bandaged right hand Avith his left, the assassin fired two bullets at 
the President. The first passed through the stomach and lodged in 
the back. The second, it is beUeved, struck a button on the Presi- 
dent's waistcoat and glanced therefrom, making an abraison upon the 
sternum. The interval between the two shots was so short as to be 
scarcely measurable. As the second shot rang out. Detective Foster 
sprang forward and intercepted the hand of the assassin, who was 
endeavoring to fire a third bullet into his victim. The President did 
not fall. He was at once supported by Islr. ]\Iilburn, by Detective 
Geary, and by Secretary Cortelyou. Before turning, he raised him- 
self on tiptoe and cast upon the young man before him, who was at 



376 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



that moment in the clutches of a number of men, a look which none 
who saw it can ever forget. A few drops of blood spurted out and fell 
on the President's waistcoat. At once the wounded man w^as led to 
a chair, into which he sank. His collar was removed and his shirt 
opened at the front. Those about him fanned him with their hats. 
Secretary Cortelyou bent over his chief, and Mr. McKinley 
whispered, ''Cortelyou, be careful. Tell Mrs. McKinley gently." 

A struggle ensued immediately between the assassin and those 
about him. Detective Foster planted a blow upon the assassin's face 
and he fell. Even after he w^as down Czolgosz tried to twist about 
and fire again at the President. Mr. Foster threw himself upon the 
wretch. Parker, the colored man, struck him almost at the same 
instant that Foster did. Indeed, a half-dozen men were trying to 
beat and strike the murderer, and they were so thick about him that 
they struck one another in their excitement. A private of the artil- 
lery corps at one moment had a bayonet-sword at the neck of Czol- 
g"osz, and would have driven it home had not Detective Ireland held 
his arm and begged him not to shed blood there before the President. 
Just then the President raised his eyes, saw what was going on, and 
with a slight motion of his right hand toward his assailant, exclaimed: 

"Let no one hurt him." 

While the guards were driving the people out of the building. 
Secretary Cortelyou asked the President if he felt any pain. Mr. 
McKinley slipped his hand through his shirt-front and pressed his 
fingers against his breast. "I feel a sharp pain here," he said. On 
withdrawing his hand he saw that the ends of his fingers were red 
with blood. Then his head fell back. At that moment Ambassador 
Aspiroz, of Mexico, forced his way to the wounded man's side, and 
in his excitement cried: ''Oh, God, Mr. President, are you shot?" 
The President roused himself and smiled sadly into the face of the 
ambassador. "Yes, I believe I am," he replied, faintly. His head 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



379 



sank back again, but only for a moment. Suddenly straightening up 
in his chair, he gripped its arms tightly and thrust his feet straight out 
before him with a quick, nervous movement. Thus he sat till the 
ambulance arrived. 

The assassin was quickly taken away by the police and the detec- 
tives. By a ruse and quick work, they managed to place him in a cell 
before the maddened people could rend him to pieces. Mr. Mc- 
Kinley was placed on a stretcher and carried out to the ambulance. 
The automobile ambulance quickly carried the wounded President to 
the Exposition hospital. After the operation the wounded President 
was taken to the residence of Mr. Milburn. 

Dr. Rixey undertook the sad task of conveying the news to Mrs. 
McKinley. 'The President has met with an accident — he has been 
hurt," were his first words. "Tell me all — keep nothing from me!", 
cried Mrs. McKinley; "I will be brave — yes, I will be brave for his 
sake!" Dr. Rixey then told her the whole story. 

Cablegrams of inquiry and regret from all governments poured in 
upon the State Department at Washington. King Edward, Emperor 
William, and other sovereigns sent personal messages. Vice-Presi- 
dent Roosevelt, members of the cabinet, and friends of the President 
started for Buffalo by special trains. 

The assassin, who first gave his name as Nieman, was quickly dis- 
covered to be Leon Czolgosz, a Pole, twenty-eight years of age, 
whose home had been at Cleveland, Ohio, where his parents were 
found to be hard-working, well-meaning people. The assassin made 
no other confession to the police than the simple statement that he 
was an anarchist, that he had ''done his duty," and that he had been 
inspired by the preachments of anarchists. 

By Saturday night the reports of the President's condition were 
favorable; Sunday they were more and more so. Monday, the news 
was still better. Secretary Cortelyou issued a statement declaring 



380 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



that nothing was being withheld from the pubHc; that the people had 
a right to the truth, and should have it. This naturally helped to 
restore pubUc confidence. Announcement was made that the 
surgeons had decided not to use the X-ray apparatus sent them, at 
their request, by Thomas A. Edison, and that for the present, at least, 
no efforts were to be made to locate the missing bullet. The doctors 
and friends of the President began to talk of taking him back to the 
White House by the ist of October. The patient's two sisters, con- 
vinced that their brother was on the way to recovery, returned to 
their home in Ohio. Senator Hanna left for Cleveland. Vice-Presi- 
dent Roosevelt, assured by the surgeons that the crisis was passed 
and the danger now at a minimum, started for the Adirondacks. 
Secretary Gage and Attorney-General Knox went to Washington. 
This day the President asked for the newspapers, and Senator Hanna 
smilingly predicted that he would soon ask for a cigar. 

On Tuesday, the President was declared convalescent. By Wed- 
nesday, the whole country was convinced that the President was re- 
covering. The last bulletin of the day was the best yet issued. 

Thursday morning, the President was given a little solid food; he 
relished it, and it appeared to do him good. "He feels better than at 
any time before," said the forenoon bulletin. Dr. McBurney left for 
New York, convinced that it would not be necessary for him to 
return. But the unfavorable turn which a few had feared came at 
last. At 3 o'clock in the afternoon the President was not so well. 
By 8.30 in the evening he was decidedly worse. Then the heart 
began to show signs of weakness, and failed to respond to stimulation. 
In the early hours of Friday morning the scenes about the Milburn 
house were alm^ost dramatic. Lights burned in all the windows. 
Carriages and automobiles rushed up at frantic pace every few 
moments, bringing doctors and members of the family. Across the 
street, the soldiers paced up and down; newspaper men darted to and 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



381 



fro; in the tents and booths which had been put up for their use, the 
correspondents and telegraph operators were making the wires throb 
with dread tidings. 

During the day there were faint flickers of hope. At 9 o'clock in 
the morning the bulletin said the President w^as concious, free from 
pain; his condition had somewhat improved; there was a better re- 
sponse to stimulation. At 2.30 in the afternoon, hope was a Httle 
stronger, for the doctors said their patient had more than held his 
own; they looked for further improvement. But an hour and a half 
later even this meager encouragement ceased. By 5.35, the surgeons 
could not disguise the fact that the President was dying. He was 
sufTering extreme prostration. Oxygen was given, but it did not 
produce the desired effect. A httle after 6 o'clock a report that the 
President was dead was circulated. 

But it was premature. The President still lived. Most of the time 
he was unconscious. Occasionally he opened his eyes and tried to 
smile. At this time he knew^ he was fated; for once, as the surgeons 
were administering the oxygen, he looked up and whispered: ''What's 
the use?" About 7 o'clock he summoned enough strength to ask for 
Mrs. McKinley. They led her to his bedside; then all retired from 
the room. The dying husband's face lighted up as he saw his life- 
companion bending over him. She kissed and caressed him; she 
stroked his hair; she crooned over him like a mother over a stricken 
child. Each tried to be brave for the other's sake. 

In this last period of consciousness, which ended about 8 o'clock, 
the President's lips were seen to be moving. The surgeons bent 
down to hear his words. He chanted the first hues of his favorite 
hymn, ''Nearer, My God, to Thee." A- Httle later he spoke again; 
Dr. Mann wrote the words dowai at the bedside, — and the last con- 
scious utterance of William McKinley was: 

"Good-by, all; good-by. It is God's way. His will be done." 



382 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



The President soon afterward lapsed into unconsciousness, and did 
not rally again. His heart-beats came more and more faintly. His 
extremities chilled. It ^vas only a question of a little time. One by 
one, members of the family stood by his side, kissed his pallid brow, 
spoke his well-loved name, and drew away in anguish. Most of the 
members of the cabinet came to say farewell. Each took the moist 
limp hand — the hand that had so well guided the helm of the ship 
of State — and held it for a moment in a parting clasp. Senator 
Hanna, ashen-faced, limped to the bedside of his great friend, and 
called: ''J\Ir. President! J\Ir. President!'' Hearing no response, he 
cried, in choking tones, "William! William!" But it was in vain. 

Thus the hours passed. The President's life slowly slipped away. 
At times it was difficult to say if the heart were still beating. The 
end was not far off, and at 2.15 A. M., Saturday, September 14th, 
President AIcKinley was dead! 

In all his hours of suffering no word of complaint or petulance 
crossed his lips. He met his fate bravely, forgiving his murderer, and 
going out of this life in the full faith of another and a better life 
beyond! 



CHAPTER XIX. 

In the Adirondacks— Start for Buffalo — Ride Through Storm — At Buffalo- 
Crowds Silent — Dismisses Military Escort— Visit to Mrs. McKinley — The 

Oath of Office — Funeral of Mr. McKinley — Christian Manliness of Mr. 
McFvinley — President Roosevelt's First Cabinet — Cabinet to Remain — An 

Estimate of Chances Made by a Change of Presidents — First Proclamation 
of President Roosevelt — Young Rulers of the World — Roosevelt the Young- 
est President — No Doubt of Him. 




HEODORE ROOSEVELT was at the Tahawus Club hunt- 
ing-camp in the Adirondacks when the tidings of President 



McKinley's death reached him. He at once started for 
Buffalo. When Mr. Roosevelt and his guides left the Tahawus Club, 
in the Adirondacks, early Friday morning on a hunting expedition 
the then Vice-President fully believed that President McKinley was 
entirely out O'f danger and on the rapid road to reco»very. That this 
was so is made manifest by his private secretary, William Eoeb, while 
the special train which bore him to Buffalo was on its recard-break- 
ing rush to the scene of the nation's tragedy. During the brief stop 
of the train at Rochester Secretary Loeb said: 

'The President wishes it understood that w^hen he left the Tahawus 
Club-house yesterday morning to go on his hunting trip into the 
mountains he had just received a dispatch from Buffalo stating that 
President McKinley was in splendid condition and was not in the 
slightest danger." 

The Roosevelt hunting party moved in the direction of Mount 

Marcy, the highest peak in the Adirondack region. They had not 

been gone over three hours when a mounted courier rode rapidly 

into Tahawus Club with messages to the Vice-President stating that 

President McKinley was in a critical condition. The messages had 

883 



884 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



been telegraphed to North Creek, and h'om there telephoned to a 
point ten miles south of Tahawus Club. Extra guides and runners 
were at once deployed from the club in the direction of Mount Marcy 
with instructions to sound a general alarm in order to find the Vice- 
President as soon as possible. 

The far-reaching megaphone code and the rifle-cracking signals of 
the mountain-climbing guides, as hour after hour passed away, 
ma-rked the progress of the searching mountaineers as they climbed 
the slope of Mount Marcy. Just as the afternoon began to merge 
with the shades of early evening, and as the searchers were nearing 
the summit of the lofty mountain, the responsive echoes of distant 
signals were heard and answered, and gradually the scouts and the 
Roosevelt party came within hailing distance of each other. 

When Colonel Roosevelt was reached and informed of the critical 
condition of the President he could scarcely believe the burden of the 
messages personally delivered to him. Startled at the serious nature 
of the news, the Vice-President, at 5.45 o'clock, immediately started 
back for the Tahawus Club. In the meantime the Adirondack stage- 
line placed at his disposal relays of horses covering the thirty-five 
miles to North Creek. A deluging thunderstorm had rendered the 
roads unusually heavy. 

All through the long, dreary night the stage-coach with the dis- 
tinguished passenger hurried along through the woods, the thick 
foliage trees furnishing a somber canopy which somewhat protected 
the party from the downpour of rain. Hours passed with the Vice- 
President torn by conflicting emotions, in which grief at the unex- 
pected tidings was uppermost. The gray of the morning had not yet 
begun to light the heavens when Alden's Lane was reached at 3.15, 
and although he was then within the reach of telephone communica- 
tion he was not apprised of the death of President McKinley. The 
stop at Alden's Lane was only of suflicient duration to allow a change 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



385 



of horses, and again the stage-coach dashed forward. From the 
latter place to North Creek, where the special train wa^'- waiting, the 
road was through heavy forest timber, and the journey was^ attended 
with actual peril. The driveways are very narrow in many places, 
with deep ravines on either side. A slight deviation would have 
meant a broken carriage or more serious trouble. But the expert 
guides piloted the Vice-President safely to his objective point and 
Colonel Roosevelt, looking careworn but expressing no fatigue, 
alighted at North Creek. 

That was 5.22 o'clock Saturday morning, and for the first time the 
traveler of the night learned that President McKinley had passed 
away at Buffalo at 2.15 o'clock. Mr. Loeb, his secretary, was the first 
to break the news to him. The new President was visibly affected by 
the intelligence, and expressed a desire to reach Buffalo a«s soon as 
possible. 

Within one minute after his arrival at North Creek he boarded the 
special train, which at once started in the direction of Buffalo, via 
Saratoga and Albany. 

The trip was a record-breaker in point of speed, in many places 
exceeding a mile a minute. There was a brief stop at Ballston to 
permit the Vice-President to send same telegrams. It was 7 o'clock, 
and a crowd at the little station received the new P»es.ident in sympa- 
thetic silence. The train made record time to* Syracuse. One mile 
was made in 42 seconds on a stretch west of Oneida. A three-minute 
stop was made at Rochester, the train leaving that city for Buffalo 
at 12.18 P. M. and at 1.40 the special rea'ched Buffalo. He had had 
a hard night's ride from the North W-oods to Albany, and then a swift 
rush across the State by special train, but his bronzed face showed no 
signs of fatigue as he stepped from the train to the platform. He 
looked grave and saddened, but not in the least tired. 

The crowd that greeted him was small, because it had been under- 
stood that he would go to Union Station. There people in great 



386 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



numbers were assembled to see him, but it was not in the plans to 
gratify the crowd with the spectacle. Precisely for the purpose of 
avoiding any demonstration it was arranged that the train should 
stop at the Terrace Station, where President Roosevelt was met by 
Mr. Ansley Wilcox and Mr. George Williams with Mr. Williams's 
carriage. A detachment of the Fourth Signal Corps, mounted, and 
a squad of twenty mounted police were on hand. 

With the police and military moving at a rapid trot in front of and 
behind the carriage, the President drove swiftly up Delaware avenue 
to the Wilcox house, which now had become one of the historical 
mansions of the country. 

It is a brick house, painted white, with a row of six stately pillars 
in front of a deep veranda, in the style of half a century ago. It is 
in one of the most beautiful parts of beautiful Delaware avenue and 
is surrounded by tall overbranching trees, which throw a deep shade 
over the handsome lawn all the way down to the terrace, five or six 
feet high, which rises up from the sidewalk and on which elevation 
above the street the house stands. 

It is not the old mansion's first experience in being identified with 
Government matters. Away back in the early part of the century it 
was used by the United States officers in command of the mihtary 
post here, and stood in a large park or square that was a part of the 
military reservation. From between the pillars in the front of the 
house there hung a large American flag. 

A large crowed had gathered in the vicinity of the house as the 
President and his cavalcade came clattering up the avenue, and stood 
•silently by as Mr. Roosevelt left the carriage and walked rapidly up 
the terrace steps and so on to the house. It had become a fixed habit 
with BufTalo crowds now to be silent, a habit formed by the anxious 
watchers just beyond the rope barriers two blocks away from the 
Milburn house, and it seemed to have spread to all gatherings of 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



387 



people in the city with only one very notable exception — the fierce 
angry throngs that two or three times had assembled in the vicinity 
of the prison where Czolgosz was confined, or where he was supposed 
to be confined, for he was very wisely and very adroitly removed when 
the President was dying and safely lodged within the walls of the 
penitentiary. 

There was not so much as a murmur when the President alighted 
or when he reappeared a short time afterward to start for the Mil- 
burn house. It was as a private citizen that Mr. Roosevelt went to 
the house where President McKinley lay dead. When his eye lighted 
on the military and police escort still drawn up in the street, he 
entered a vigorous objection, and as he was getting into the carriage 
and the military were lining up to follow him he called upon them 
in a short, sharp command to ''Hah." Then he said that he would 
only have two policemen go with him. So this arrangement was 
made, and with a mounted policeman on each side of his carriage he 
drove off toward the house that was nearly a mile away. 

It w^as solely to pay his respects to Mrs. McKinley that the Vice- 
President made his visit to the Milburn house, and although nearly 
all the members of the Cabinet were there when he arrived it was only 
as private citizens mourning for a common friend that they met. The 
stay there was short, and when Mr. Roosevelt started back to 
the Wilcox house it was understood that he was to be followed 
quickly by the Cabinet members, who were to take part in the cere- 
mony of administering the oath as President of the United States. 

Various rumors were current as to this ceremony. It was even re- 
ported that the new President had been sworn in on his way down 
from the North Woods. It was asserted that the oath was to be 
administered at the Milburn house, but a crowd still hovered about 
Mr. Wilcox's residence, and when the Vice-President reappeared 
there, followed a few moments later by Judge Hazel and the members 



388 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



of the Cabinet, the patient waiters knew that they had not erred in 
judgment and that they were at least to see the outside of a house in 
which was being enacted a scene which would make it ever memor- 
able in history. 

In the presence of the members of the Cabinet, a few friends and a 
score of newspaper men. he prepared to qualify as the head of the 
State. Simple as was the ceremony it was exceedingly impressive. 
Requested by Secretary of War Root, speaking for the Cabinet, to 
take the oath, he replied: 

"I am ready to take the oath. And I wish to say that it shall be my 
aim to continue, absolutely unbroken, the policies of President^Ic- 
Kinlev for the peace, the prosperity, and the honor of our beloved 
country." 

''Theodore Roosevelt." said District Attorney Hazel, "hold up 
your right hand/' 

Erect, self-possessed. ]\Ir. Roosevelt repeated after Judge Hazel 
the words: 

"I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of 
President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability pre- 
serve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. 
And thus I swear." 

It was all over in a few minutes, and the youngest man who had 
ever assumed the Presidency was in office. 

All day Sunday the remains of President ]\IcKinlev lav in state in 
the City Hall at Buffalo, after simple services at the ]\Iilburn resi- 
dence. From every part of the world came messages of condolence, 
— Kings, Emperors, IMinisters contributing their meed of praise for 
the dead, commiseration for the closely-connected mourners, and 
sympathy for the American people who had lost a wise and benelicent 
ruler. 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



389 



Monday morning a special train bore the body to Washington, 
and all along the way there was a pathetic demonstration of the sor- 
row of the people. Bells were tolled, hymns sung by choral societies, 
flowers strewn upon the track. 

For four hundred and fifty miles the train ran between two parallel 
lines of citizens standing with bared heads. Not a few of them wxre 
in tears. The schools were dismissed, and the pupils stood by the 
side of the track with flowers or tiny furled flags in their hands. 

At the national capital the remains of President McKinle}^ rested 
for the night in the White House, scene of his labors and his triumphs. 
Mrs. McKinley occupied her old room, full of bitter-sweet associ- 
ations. President Roosevelt went to the house of his sister. Next 
day a solemn procession sw^ept up historic Pennsylvania Avenue, and 
impressive funeral services were held in the rotunda of the Capitol. 
The catafalque which bore the body of President McKinley had 
carried also the remains of President Lincoln and President Garfield. 

President Roosevelt and all the officials of the Government, Army 
and Navy officers. Supreme Court judges, many Senators and Repre- 
sentatives, and members of the diplomatic corps attended the 
obsequies. The only living ex-President, Mr. Cleveland, was present. 

Tuesday night a special train bore the funeral cortege to Canton, 
and the next day the remains of the President lay in state among his 
neighbors and townsmen. Deep was the grief, innumerable were the 
pathetic incidents, as the men and women who had so well known and 
loved the dead statesman pressed forward to look upon his face. 

On Thursday, services were held in the Methodist Church of 
which Mr. McKinley had long been a member. That same day 
services were held in the churches in every city of the Union — 
memorial services for a great and good man and a loved President. 
In the afternoon of Thursday all that remained of William McKinley 
was deposited in the vault at Westlawn Cemetery, near to the graves 



390 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



of his two children. Only two weeks elapsed since the President in full 
health and happiness, and with the star of his fame shining brighter 
than ever before, had left Canton for his visit to Buffalo. 

Is it not fitting to here give the estimate of the Christian manliness 
of Mr. McKinley? Mr. Riis, the reformer and the friend of the poor, 
has spoken of that same Christian manliness of Theodore Roosevelt. 
Let Rev. Dr. Bristol, the Washington pastor of the late President, 
do as much for WilHam McKinley. Says he: 

'The civilized world mourns w^ith our own country the untimely 
death of President McKinley, and echoes the words of the bereaved 
widows 'The country cannot spare him.' But throughout Christen- 
dom there has mingled with the profoundest grief a sw^eet consolation 
and spiritual satisfaction inspired by his pure life and exalted char- 
acter, and by his triumphant victory over the terrors of death through 
faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Once more has it been illustrated that 
the most impressive and commanding greatness of man resides in 
character. The final question with the common heart of humanity is 
not what was he as a statesman, or soldier, scholar, or genius? but 
What was he as a man? In a distant though a kindred land, mourn- 
ing the loss of his country's President and of his own friend, the writer 
has been comforted to hear, from humblest Methodist Chapel to 
stately Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's Cathedral, the most tender 
and eloquent tributes paid to the exalted character and pure unselfish 
life of William McKinley. The Church Universal rejoices in his 
Christian virtues, and exultingly adds his name to the immortal 
heroes, saints, and martyrs who have fought the good fight, who have 
kept the faith, and who have left to the w^orld the rich heritage of a 
new ideal, and the undying testimony of the saving, sanctifying power 
of the gospel. ' - 

'Tn all the deepest meaning of the words, William McKinley was a 
rhan of God. He enjoyed the personal, conscious experience of salva- 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



391 



tion. From childhood, his was a life of faith and prayer. Religion 
was to him a divine reality. Jesus Christ was not only his ideal, 'the 
chief among ten thousand,' but his living, individual Saviour. From 
a godly Methodist mother he had learned the way of life, and from his 
youth up was ever under the control of a clean, quick, authoritative 
conscience, the voice of the Holy Spirit within him. 

*'Early in life he became a devout student of the Bible ana a suc- 
cessful Bible teacher. To him, what the Bible said God said. In- 
terested as he always was in every phase of thought, in literature, 
politics, economics, and education, when he attended church he w^as 
eager to hear the Word; no other theme was a substitute for the 
gospel to his heart. When assured by his pastor that he would not 
be embarrassed by any pulpit politics, he said, with a kindly smile of 
satisfaction, 'I hope not. I have politics enough during the w^eek. 
What I need, when I go to church, is Christ, and Him crucified.' The 
sermons most highly commended by him, whoever may have 
preached them, w^ere spiritual, heart-feeding sermons on Christian ex- 
perience, the love of God and man, the Holy Spirit, peace, brother- 
hood, providence, the beauty of holiness, and the sublime self-sacrifice 
of Jesus Christ. 

"He was a member and trustee of the Methodist Episcopal Church 
of Canton, Ohio, wdiich he always spoke of as his religious home, a 
place very dear to his heart. When he experienced religion and 
joined the church, he entered upon the active duties of the Christian 
life, becoming a Sunday-school teacher and superintendent. It has 
been the privilege of the writer to meet men who belo^nged to- his 
class and Sunday-school when they were boys. Always fond of 
children, Mr. McKinley was most successful in his Sunday-school 
work; it is safe to say that many of the young people under him 
became members of church through his ministrations. He was 
greatly interested in revivals, and attended them even when the 



392 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



duties of his official life were most pressing. His faith seems never 
to have wavered, and his belief in the fatherly love of God abided 
to the last. Devoted to his wife, there was a time when during a 
grievous spell of illness her life was despaired of by all around him, but 
he never lost hope, or doubted that God would spare her life. So 
from these minute and pathetic details of his private life to all the 
hurrying, unfolding events of the history with which he w^as identified, 
he believed in a ruling and overruling Providence. During the days 
of the Spanish-American war, the concern of this great, Christian, 
praying, God-trusting President was, not to know what mere politi- 
cians thought, but to know what God and the people thought. He 
believed God was with the people. If he waited, it was only to be 
sure of the providential indications. When he believed that he knew 
the will of God, he never hesitated. If he was slow to resort to the 
sword, it w^as because he loved peace; but, when in the providence 
of God war was inevitable, he was swift as the eagle. 

"Not alone in state papers, proclamations, and public addresses, 
but much more in private conversation, did he show that he possessed 
the magnificent faith of our fathers. He not only dared to follow 
where Providence seemed to lead, but, having followed, he dared 
humbly, and yet bravely, to throw the responsibility upon Providence, 
and then give God the glory for all our victories and successes. 
Speaking of his frequent references to Providence in his speeches and 
proclamations, and of the criticisms which his political opponents jest- 
ingly made upon them, he said: They may sneer at the idea of Prov- 
idence, If they wnll, but no man who doubts there is a Providence 
controlling the events of history will ever sit here,' and he tapped the 
table to indicate that such a man would never be trusted by the 
people, or elected to the Presidency. 

"In the last moments of his life, and in the triumphs of that calm 
and peaceful death, this faith in Providence rose to the sublime: 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



393 



♦ 

'Good-by, all; good-by. It is God's way. His will be done, not ours.' 

"His love of the sweet hymns of his Christian faith, — hymns of his 
home and his church, — inspired the last words that fell from his stain- 
less lips. Among his favorite hymns were : 

"'Jesus, lover of my soul;' 

" 'There's a wideness in God's mercy 

Like the wideness of the sea;' 

" 'How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord;' 
" 'It came upon the midnight clear;' 

and 

" 'Nearer, my God, to thee, 

Nearer- to thee. 
E'en though it be a cross.' 

These words he murmured, saying, This is my constant prayer,' 
when 

" 'God's finger touched him, and he slept.' " 

While these eloquent words were in the mind of the sorrowing 
clergyman who penned them, in the darkness of a prison cell lay the 
man who had done the terrible deed, and who, on October 29th, was 
to die for it, unrepentant to the last, refusing the consolations of 
religion, and going to judgment exulting in what he had done. 

But "the fierce Hght that beats about a throne" was now leveled 
upon the man who had had the reins of government thrust in his 
hands. He had been made President; he had taken the oath of office 
in the Wilcox house. Immediately it was done he said: "I should 
like to see the members of the Cabinet a few minutes after^the others 
retire." 

This was the signal for the score of people who had witnessed the 
ceremony to go. As they turned to leave the room the President 
said in a far firmer voice than had been his when he took the oath of 
office: "I should gladly shake hands with you all," he said. 

He shook hands with every one in the room, and then all except the 
members of the Cabinet filed out^ 



394 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

President Roosevelt's first Cabinet meeting was held in the same 
room in which he had been sworn in. It lasted for nearly an hour. 
When it was over it was announced with authority that the delibera- 
tions had all tended toward ascertaining the best way in which the 
sentiment which the President had expressed in accepting office 
might be carried into action. It was agreed in the consultation that 
the first and most important step was the retention in office of all the 
members of President McKinley's Cabinet. 

The members of the Cabinet were urged to retain their portfolios, 
even at the expense to themselves of some personal sacrifice. It was 
announced that the President had received assurances from Secretary 
Hay and Secretary Gage that they would follow the same course. 

There is no Constitutional requirement that Congress shall be 
called together upon the succession of the Vice-President to the 
Presidency, and it seemed advisable in pursuing the one object which 
the President and his Cabinet had in view that the even tenor of the 
country's way would be better preserved if Congress were not called 
together until its regular time for meeting. 

Five minutes after he took the oath President Roosevelt called Mr. 
Cortelyou, President McKinley's private secretary, to one side and 
asked him to continue as private secretary to the President. Mr. 
Cortelyou promised to do so, and suggested that he would be glad of 
the assistance of Mr. Loeb, Mr. Roosevelt's private secretary. 

The members of the Cabinet had retired to a room in the Wilcox 
residence and there President Roosevelt joined them. What might 
be designated as an informal Cabinet meeting was held fifteen minutes 
after the President w^as sworn in. At its conclusion it was announced 
that no action had been taken which was of public interest, and that 
no Cabinet action need be looked for until after the body of President 
McKinley was interrred at Canton. In fact no questions of politics 
or policy were discussed openly. 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 395 

After the conference President Roosevelt said to the newspaper 
men present: 

"Following out the brief statement I made when taking the oath, 
that I would follow the administrative lines laid down by President 
McKinley, I requested the members of the Cabinet who were present 
to remain in their positions at least for the present. They have 
assured me that they will, and I may say that I have assurances also 
from the absent members." 

It was less than half an hour after President Roosevelt had taken 
the oath that a carriage drove up to the Wilcox home, containing 
Senator Mark Hanna and his private secretary. The Senator seemed 
to have agen ten years in a day. His face, usually florid and wreathed 
in smiles, was pallid and drawn. Usually active on his feet, he actually 
tottered ac he moved about with stooped shoulders and bowed head. 

As he stepped from the carriage and proceeded toward the door of 
the Wilcox house, leaning heavily on the arm of his secretary. Presi- 
dent Roosevelt saw him coming and advanced to meet him. It is 
not necessary to tell those who are familiar with the political status of 
Senator Hanna and President Roosevelt that the moment was an em- 
barrassing one for both of them. When the President courteously 
held out his hand to Senator Hanna the latter shifted his cane and his 
soft white felt hat from his right to his left hand and returned the 
greeting cordially. 

"Mr. President," said Senator Hanna, "I wish you success and a 
prosperous administration, sir. I trust that yon will command me if 
I can be of any service." 

The President did not reply, except by a pressure of the hand. 
Senator Hanna's thoughts seemed to be far away. As he moved 
towai'ds the door President Roosevelt accompanied him, still holding 
his hand. They parted without any further exchange of words. 

As Senator Hanna walked back toward his carriage several men] 



396 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



greeted him. He responded in a most perfunctory manner, as though 
he did not hear what they said. When he was asked to make some 
statement for publication he said: "I cannot say I shall not try to 
utter sentiments of tribute. For many years the President has been 
my dearest friend. My devotion to the President during all these 
years ought to indicate how I esteemed the man and what I thought 
of him." 

The first official act of President Roosevelt was the issuing of the 
following Proclamation, the appropriateness and feUcitous expression 
of which could not be improved: 

"By the President of the United States of America, a Proclama- 
tion: 

''A terrible bereavement has befallen our people. The President 
of the United States has been struck down; a crime committed not 
only against the Chief Magistrate, but against every law-abiding and 
liberty-loving citizen. 

''President McKinley crowned a life of largest love for his fellow^ 
men, of most earnest endeavor for their welfare, by a death of Chris- 
tian fortitude; and both the way in which he lived his life and the 
way in which, in the supreme hour of trial, he met his death, will re- 
main forever a precious heritage of our people. 

"It is meet that we, as a nation, express our abiding love and 
reverence for his life, our deep sorrow for his untimely death. 

"Now, therefore, I, Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United 
States of America, do appoint Thursday next, September 19, the day 
in which the body of the dead President will be laid in its last earthly 
resting-place, as a day of mourning and prayer throughout the 
United States. I earnestly recommend all the people to assemble 
in their respective places of divine worship, there to bow down in 
submission to the will of Almighty God, and to pay out of full hearts 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



397 



their homage of love and reverence to the great and good President, 
whose death has smitten the nation with bitter grief. 

''In witness whereof I have hereunto^ set my hand and caused the 
seal of the United States to be afhxed. 

''Done at the city of Washington, the 14th day of September, 
A.D., one thousand nine hundred and one, and of the Independence 
of the United States the one hundred and twenty-sixth. 

"(Seal.) THEODORE ROOSEVELT." 

ZIEGLER..al..(53) 

"By the President, 

"JOHN HAY, Secretary of State." 

The transfer of the Presidential office by the death of the in- 
cumbent, which has occurred five times in the history of the country, 
involves far less of change in the government than is usually expected 
from its transfer by the regular process of election. It is the awful 
suddenness, the violence, of the present change that so disturbed the 
country. But in unexpected emergencies men's characters are best 
tried, and it is not different with a nation. This was a time for calm- 
ness, for confidence, for patriotic faith. 

The universal execration not only of the miserable assassin but of 
every manifestation of that reckless spirit of discontent that inspired 
him, was the sufficient assurance that anarchism can never attain a 
dangerous lodgment on our soil. It is doubtful if the murder of the 
President was more than the mad act of one unbalanced youth; but in 
any case, it indicates no^ widely-sprer.d disease that cannot and will 
not be stamped out by the sober sense of the American people. While 
the terrifying crime had increased our sorrow in the country's loss, it 
need not add apprehension to our grief. 

McKinley died at the summit of his fame, at a time when he pos- 
sessed, as few Presidents have done, the respect and confidence of the 
whole people and when the bitterness of party conflict had been 



398 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



allayed in the broad advance of the national life and activity. This 
advance would still continue, and the respect and confidence that 
McKinley earned as a type of the patriotic and purposeful American 
character, might freely be transferred tO' his successor. 

Mr. Roosevelt brought to his high office a dififerent temperameitit 
and training from Mr. McKinley's, but certainly no less of intellectual 
character, of serious purpose, of unselfish patriotism. The abound- 
ing energy of his physical and mental nature, his constant and stren- 
uous activity in many fields of endeavor, had possibly obscured, in 
some degree, the forceful earnestness of his public character and the 
real measure of his public achievement. He had never been a self- 
seeker, yet in posts of high responsibility he had never faltered nor 
failed. He came to the Presidency with a fuller equipment of knowl- 
edge 'and experience than many of our Presidents have had, with 
ripened judgment and untarnished honor. If it were felt for the 
moment that the ship of State had lost its pilot, the assurance came 
that the helm again was strongly and firmly grasped, by one familiar 
with the chart. 

That Mr. Roosevelt's accession would produce some uncertainty 
in the combinations of party politics was probable; that it implied any 
early change in public policies was not. With all his broad human 
sympathies, Mr. Roosevelt was a man of sound practical sense, whose 
high ideals were grounded on the nature and history of our institu- 
tions and whose ambition would be to conserve and protect all true 
interests of the nation in a spirit of justice amd uprightness, of unity 
and peace. 

In the great task that devolved on him he deserved the sympathy 
and support of every American. The loss that had fallen on the 
country had wiped out all the differences and disagreements of the 
past and brought the nation into close accord. In this common senti- 
ment the people could hail the young President with confidence and 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



399 



hope. The nation is greater than any man, and its great life cannot 
be hindered by any man's going or coming. Presidents do not rule 
the nation; the nation rules Presidents, who succeed or fail as they 
express its purposes and answer its ideals. The people could honor 
McKinley's memory best by cordial trust in his successor, not merely 
as the able and upright man that he was but as the personal repre- 
sentative of unshaken constitutional go-vernment, which rests upon 
the patriotic devotion of the American people. 

A young man, indeed; but were there not other young, or com- 
paratively young, men in the world who were rulers? By the ordering 
of that Providence which shapes alike the destinies of men and 
nations, the three leading powers of the world to-day — the United 
States, England, and Germany — are under the supreme executive 
guidance of comparatively young men. These three, the President 
of the United States, the Emperor of Germany, and King Edward of 
England, together wield a tremendous power, and should they choose 
to act together in amy given line of policy not all the rest of the world 
united could withstand their will. 

Together they rule over nearly one-half the population of the 
globe, or more than 529,000,000 people of every race, color, and 
creed, scattered over a territory of not less than 13,000,000 square 
miles extending into every clime in every corner of the earth. These 
three young men, the rulers of England and Germany, and our Presi- 
dent, are Saxons of the purest and sturdiest type, and they represent 
that Saxon civilization which stands for the highest, noblest, and 
most brilliant achievements of the human race, the freest forms of 
government, and the most exalted standards of human conduct, a 
civilization which is destined yet to lead the whole world up to a 
higher range of life and action. 

All three are avowed Protestants in religious belief, and exercise 
authority over Protestant nations. Two of them are explicitly com- 



400 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



mitted by their vows of office to the support and protection of the 
Protestant faith, one of the Church of Luther, and the other of the 
Church of England. Yet under the governments of all three, and 
in all lands wherever their authority extends, the largest freedom of 
religious worship is enjoyed and the fullest liberty accorded in all 
matters of religious behef. 

Between William of Germany, Edward of England, and Theodore 
Roosevelt certain remarkable resemblances exist, and some interesting 
contrasts may be drawn. AMlliam of Germany came to the throne 
thirteen years ago, when he was only thirty-one years of age. Like 
]\Ir. Roosevelt, the German ruler has often been charged with being 
impulsive and hot-headed, and given to rash and inconsiderate speech. 
These quaHties have at times subjected William IL to not a little 
ridicule and to much severe criticism from those who were in a posi- 
tion to indulge in that luxur}^ without fear of the penalties of Icse 
majestc. At times grave apprehensions have arisen lest these pro- 
pensities of the German Emperor should precipitate some crisis 
upon his nation or involve him in a war w4th some other Power. 
But thus far these fears have proved groundless, and the world is 
beginning to recognize and to concede that the young German 
monarch is, after all, a man of brilliant capacity, with a genius for 
government which no one suspected at the start. Li all his apparent 
madness there has been a method, and under his aggressive and pro- 
gressive policy Germany has grown stronger, richer, and more power- 
ful than it ever was before. AMth all his slips of tongue, and all his 
grandiloquent assumptions, it is generally conceded that William IL 
is a man of pure and blameless personal character, of remarkable gifts, 
and of lofty and unselfish aims. 

King Edward of England is older than either of the other men by 
more than fifteen years, but when he came to the throne a year ago 
he had had as little experience in public aft'airs, and his capacity for 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



401 



government was as much of an unknown quantity as that of his 
young nephew, WilHam of Germany, when he began his sway, and 
far less than that of Mr. Roosevelt when he succeeded to the Presi- 
dency. And there were not a few things in the career of the present 
King of England when he figured as Prince of Wales which afYorded 
ground for the fear that he would rule neither wisely nor well. But 
thus far he has done both and shown himself to be a worthy son and 
successor of Victoria, the great and the good. Added years and the 
burdens and responsibilities of world-wide empire have brought the 
natural result of sobered judgment and a carefully ordered life. The 
ship of state that flies the union jack has a true and safe pilot in 
Edward VII. In that assurance the English people may confidently 
rest. 

One beheves with all his heart and soul in the divine right of kings; 
our young Presidentnio less fervently in the divine right of the people. 
The one stands for as large a degree of absolutism in government as 
the times and the temper of his people will permit him to exercise; 
the other represents the spirit of modern democracy of the highest, 
purest, and noblest type, in a government ''of the people, by the 
people, for the people." William and Edward rule by grace of royal 
birth and hereditary law; Mr. Roosevelt governs because a free and 
independent nation has put the reins of authority for a season in his 
hands. They are kings; he is first and last of all a servant of the 
people. And, after all, in spite of hereditary privileges, royal titles, 
and long-estabHshed precedent, the power of President Roosevelt is 
greater in many ways than that of any living constitutional monarch. 
They stand farther away from the people, the source of constitutional 
authority, than he; they are more or less limited in their official acts 
by bureaucrats and departmental chiefs, and have far less power of 
initiative in mattters of goverment poHcy. In brief, character and 
personality are more important factors in the Presidency of the 



402 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



United States than they are in the rule of any monarch, and, happily 
for the American people, our young President, like his beloved pre- 
decessor, is a man in whom both these factors are found of the rarest 
and most exalted type. 

But there is a difference between this Emperor, this King and this 
President. President Roosevelt is essentially American. He is 
characteristic of America, a product of this country. He has both 
forced destiny and been forced by it, and he has studied men and 
events, and doubtless learned much of their and his own limitations. 

''Now the entrance upon the Presidency is a new phase of life, in 
some respects to be likened to that of matrimony. The new situation 
means new responsibilities, new restrictions and new opportunities. 
The light, off-hand decision, the quickness of movement and the 
sense of freedom which accompanies the unmarried man must give 
way to care, prudence and thoughtful planning. It may be irksome, 
but it is inevitable. There are the people and their industries, their 
prosperity and their happiness, all to be borne in mind before action 
is taken. Mr. Roosevelt is audacious, but not reckless. 

'The truth is, perhaps, best stated by saying that Mr. Roosevelt 
is not a complete exponent of his party ideas — he stands apart, 
neither above nor beneath,- but aside. In the circles which included 
Mr. McKinley he was to some extent feared. Mr. Hanna, reputed, 
perhaps untruly, to have wielded much influence with Mr. McKinley, 
disliked Roosevelt, and did not hesitate to say that the Senate was 
averse to being "bossed by a boy." This was w^hen it was first sug- 
gested that Roosevelt be nominated for the Vice-Presidency. 

"As a matter of fact, the party managers soon learned that Roose- 
velt was too strong to be safely antagonized. There was danger that 
the convention might be "stampeded" to him. 

"The new President is a marvel of concentrated American strength, 
unbeholden to his party so much as it is to him.'* 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



405 



This was the expression of a wise man when President Roosevelt 
first came into power. Here was a man in possession of the highest 
honor the country could bestow upon one of its citizens; he had 
proved himself of sterling worth in whatsoever office he had held in 
City government, State government, and in battle. Why should 
there be a thought that he should prove of less worth as the Presi- 
dent of the United States? 



CHAPTER XX. 

Home Life— "Tranquillity" on Oyster Bay— Rule of Simplicity— Mrs. Roose- 
velt—A Gracious and Good Woman— Ideal Wife and Mother— "$300 a Year 

Enough for a Woman to Dress On"— The Roosevelt Children— 'Swash- 
buckler Americanism"— Honors conferred at Yale College— Resume — The 

Country is Assured— The Good Work will Go On— The President's Atti- 
tude on Affairs of State— The Country will Continue to Speak with Pride 

the Name of Theodore Roosevelt. 

MUCH has been written about Theodore Roosevelt, his b"fe and 
his family, and the wholesomeness of it all has been repre- 
sented for years in the way in which hundreds of thousands 
of American citizens have oalled its head not only by his first name, 
but by his nickname of 'Teddy." As Mr. F. J. Stimson once wrote 
in a poem: 

*'He whom men call 'Teddy' 

And the gods call 'Theodore.' " 

But it is always pleasant to know something of the family life of 
such a mian, without in any way desiring to drag into public notice 
that part of his life which essentially belongs to himself, and which 
neither he nor any one else wishes to vulgarize. 

Colonel Roosevelt has for years lived on the top of a hill over- 
looking Long Island Sound, at Oyster Bay, in a large, unassuming 
house, full of the stuffed heads of animals of one kind or another that 
have been the results of his many hunting trips. The floors are covered 
with vSkins of all kinds, and it has been a pride of his to have only 
such trophies in the lowxr part of his house as he himself was re- 
sponsible for. Here the family are together always in the summer, 
and often far into the winter. They all, from Mrs. Roosevelt down, 
gather there whenever they can, stay as long as possible, and only 

407 



408 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



leave when duties of one kind or another call them away. The 
simpHcity of the household, the simpHcity of the method of life, is as 
unusual among such people as it is pleasant, and there is no more 
probability of any change in the method of life, except such as is 
necessitated by the President's new duties, than there is that the 
characters of the people themselves will change. 

All about the President's house, on the sides of Sagamore Hill, are 
the country residences of his relatives; and the different families can 
gather together some eighteen or twenty children. One of the im- 
portant features of the community are the holiday expeditions which 
Theodore Roosevelt and this army of young people have undertaken 
through the woods and along the shore since the oldest of them could 
toddle along behind their cousin and father. It is a common and 
interesting sight to see him, dressed in knickerbockers, striding along 
through the woods and over fences, with a troop of children doing 
their best to keep up with him, on their way for a bath in the bay, or 
taking hold of hands and running down the great sand cliff called 
Coopers Bluff, which drops from the top of the hill into the Sound 
itself. They all talk at once; they discuss the nature of some new- 
found nest or insect or flower, and not the least interested of the party 
is its leader. 

The reports that have got abroad that Mr. Roosevelt would give 
up this Oyster Bay house during his term as President of the United 
States cannot be true, as no one who knows him could conceive of 
his giving up the opportunity for rest and exercise, for the kind of 
family life which he most desires, and which he could not possibly 
have anywhere else. 

When after his return from Montauk Point at the close of the 
Spanish war he stood in the village under the trees on an old band- 
stand and told the people of his town what it all meant to him and 
ought to mean to them, he began by recalling an incident that showed 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



409 



much of his own honesty and homehness. He looked up into the 
trees, where the village boys hung to the limbs like so many turkey 
buzzards and then down into the faces of the whole town round about 
the band-stand. He laughed a moment, and then said that he could 
see before him, as if it were only yesterday, one time when he was a 
boy and had come to that same place to hear the orator of some 
Fourth of July day, and had climbed that tree — the boys in that tree 
squirmed with delight — and listened to that other orator. It was 
quite true, and no doubt the things that the boys of Oyster Bay do 
to-day he did then in all the vigor of his youthful existence. The fine 
point is that he is just as young in mind and spirit to-day as he was 
then, and if the enormous number of details and the unappreciated 
responsibilities of his present office do not weigh him down, Theo- 
dore Roosevelt will be as young twenty years hence as he is now. 
The line old manor-house where he lived as a boy resting under the 
great trees close to the village was humorously named then and is 
still known as 'Tranquillity," because of the lively family of brothers 
who grew^ up there, and of which he was one. So he wants his own 
boys to grow up, and on the place at Sagmore Hill there are dogs 
and animal pets of every description, generously tolerated by the 
mother and encouraged by the father. There even was a pet baby 
bear who came as a gift from some Western friend, and for a time, 
until his increasing strength began to take him out of the category 
of pets and put him among the wild beasts, used to drink cider out 
of a tin pan, and casually lead two or three of the young people about 
the lawns at the end of his chain when they brought him from his 
house, under the impression that they were going to lead him. And 
in the midst of these pets and games and gathering together of all 
sorts of natural-history collections there is always the serious, 
vigorous talk of things that are w^orth talking about, even when you 
are with children. In the midst of the Fourth of July celebrations. 



410 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



when everybody is setting off rockets and Roman candles, every one 
who is near Theodore Roosevelt realizes that there is something 
behind the noise and the shining lights. It may not be spoken of 
except when one or another brin,gs up a specific question for dis- 
cussion, but it is there, and no one who has taken part in such holi- 
day celebrating has missed it or failed to realize that partriotism and 
pride in nationality are still w^onderfuUy fine treasures to possess. 
That is what one takes away from the Roosevelt household, and it 
was there long before the President became so prominently before 
the nation. It was there as soon as the home was made. It was that 
which sent him to the Spanish war, and which will carry him through 
the hardest task and in the highest office of any public man of our 
country. 

In fact, everything about the Oyster Bay home, about Mrs. Roose- 
velt and the children, as well as about the President himself, seems to 
be typical of the best and the most modern American life. In these 
days we are all thinking more and more of out-door life; the walls 
and the floors of the Roosevelt house, as well as the bodies and the 
faces of the Roosevelt children, show how much out-door life has 
meant to that family. We are all vigorous people, pushing the world 
along, interested in foreign as well as home affairs, exerting our in- 
tellects in the advancement of knowledge of all kinds; the Roosevelt 
librar}^ and the healthy and animated conversation that any visitor 
finds awaiting him in that household speak of the same intellectual 
vigor. No one comes away from the home at Sagamore Hill without 
a better feeling of what the family means in this world, without a 
higher idea of his own duties and responsibilities, without some un- 
spoken resolution to try to live likewise himself, and these same im- 
pressions carried into the White House and into the conduct of the 
government will be as healthy and optimistic an influence over the 
whole of the United States as could well be imagined. 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



411 



That is why it all seems proper that Theodore Roosevelt should be 
President of the United States. Not only he himself but his whole 
family stand for what is most patriotic, healthy, and dignified in 
Americanism, and they have stood for this in their own normal way 
ever since they grew old enough to stand for anything. 

It is encouraging to Americans all over the country to see such a 
man at their head, and such a family making the old White House 
bright and cheerful. And that is why, too, the whole nation has a 
right to take the family, as well as its head, into its friendship — with- 
out any cheap desire to hear a lot of personalities that are sacred, but 
with the wish to make the family what it really is — the first family 
in the land. 

And when the time comes for them to leave the White House, 
whether at the end of three years or of seven, they will return to their 
own home just the same in every respect, except for the passage of 
the years — just as simple and dignified, just as typical in all their ways 
of what is best in the United States. 

The incoming of the new administration in no way destroys the fine 
tradition regarding the high character and dignity which has char- 
acterized each woman who has in turn been called "First Lady in the 
Land." Thirty women, representing widely varied phases of the 
social fabric, have owned this distinction. Several of them were 
gifted to a high degree with beauty and intellect; some were simply 
wives unacquainted with the conventionalities of the great world, and 
having little taste for the ceremonial life intO' which their position 
thrust them, but all were sincere, amiable women, conscientious, and 
admirable in type. Mrs. Roosevelt, by birth and wide social acquaint- 
ance, is entitled to admission to the most exclusive circles of this 
country and Europe. She will be able to converse with ambassadors 
in their own languages. She knows all the intricate rules of pre- 
cedence which foreigners consider so essential to order. She knows 



412 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



how to be formal as well as gracious, and she has the exquisite tact 
of the real woman of the world. It is too early to speculate as to the 
innovations which she will advocate, but they will not be so sweeping 
or so radical as to antagonize the rest of Washington society. In any 
event it seems certain that her reign will be more brilliant than any 
other has been. 

That Mrs. Roosevelt has never before appeared prominently in the 
gay world is a matter of her own choice and inclination. Unswerv- 
ingly ambitious for her husband, she herself has kept aloof from all 
publicity. Not until Mr. Roosevelt became Vice-President did she 
permit her picture to be published by the press, and then only at her 
husband's earnest request. Never has she allowed herself to be inter- 
viewed. In fact, outside her circle of friends and those who have been 
placed in public relation to Mr. Roosevelt people know very little of 
her personal appearance, her character or her tastes. When she 
passed through New York on her way to President McKinley's 
funeral, a dozen persons, perhaps, at the crowded station and in the 
streets through which she drove knew that the tall, pale, handsome 
lady in deep mourning was the wife of the new President. 

Mrs. Roosevelt was Edith Kermit Carow, daughter of Charles 
Carow, of New York, and granddaughter of Isaac Carow, in his day 
one of the most prominent shipping merchants in the country. Her 
mother was Miss Gertrude Tyler, of Nor\\ach, Connecticut. Mrs. ♦ 
Roosevelt was born about thirty-seven years ago in the old-fashioned 
family home at Fourteenth Street and Union Square, a locality now 
given up to business. Her family and the Roosevelts were on inti- 
mate terms, and the little Edith doubtless carried her dolls and their 
finery a great many times to the near-by mansion where lived her 
future husband. One of his sisters, now Mrs. Douglas Robinson, was 
her dearest friend, and it is pleasant to record that the childish 
affection between them has never wavered. Thev are now the closest 




GBORGK B. CORTEIyYOU, SKCRETARY TO THE PRKSIDBNT 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



415 



of friends and confidants. Theodore Roosevelt was not a robust boy, 
not even a remarkably bright boy, and there is no evidence that he 
played any special part in Miss Carow's early life. Certainly he did 
not regard her sentimentally at that time. 

After their childhood passed she was sent to a fashionable private 
school, and he went his somewhat erratic way through Harvard. 
Miss Carow went to Europe, and Mr. Roosevelt married a beautiful 
Boston girl, Miss Alice Lee. This was in 1880, and three years later 
the young wife died, leaving behind her an infant daughter. 

Miss CarO'W was still in Europe, and there again she met Theodore 
Roosevelt. In the spring of 1886 they were married, the ceremony 
taking place at St. George's Church, Hanover Square, London. 

Five children have been born to the Roosevelts, and a happier and 
more affectionate family does not exist. Alice, the daughter of the 
first Mrs. Roosevelt, has never felt the loss of her mother. She is as 
genuinely attached to her stepmother as she is to her father and 
young sister and brothers. The most complete harmony reigns in the 
household. 

Mrs. Roosevelt is an ideal wife and mother. She is devoted, but 
she has not sacrificed her individuality to her devotion. She has not 
neglected her dress or her appearance. She has read deeply, and 
keeps herself fully informed in foreign and domestic affairs. A little 
volume of verse, published for private circulation, shows decided 
literary talent. A good horsewoman and an untiring walker she is 
hardly to be called an athletic woman. She does not favor women's 
clubs, the only society to which she belongs being the Mothers' Asso- 
ciation of New York State. It will be remembered that she declined 
to become president general of the Daughters of the American Revo- 
lution, although every pressure was brought to bear upon her. 

While Mrs. Roosevelt cannot be described as a beauty, she has 
many attractions of face and figure. Hers is the aristocratic type — 



416 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



dignified, clear-cut and delicate. She has soft brown e}'es, bright 
with intelligence, and a very fair complexion. Her abundant hair is 
light brown and is dressed with extreme plainness. A\^hether for day 
or evening, shopping or a ball, it is always brushed away from her 
broad forehead and coiled loosely at the back of her head. With 
evening dress she sometimes adds an aigrette or a rosette of ribbon, 
which is becoming and increases her five feet six inches of height. 
She has a slight, girlish figure, and moves Avith much grace. Her 
most conspicuous charm is her smile. It is a spontaneous, sunshiny 
smile, full of graciousness — the kind of smile that gives timid people 
confidence. 

]\Irs. Roosevelt's strong individuality shows itself even in her 
clothes. She wears very handsome gowns, and they all look as if 
they vxre built for her and would not look so well on any other 
Avoman. Her street-dresses are quite simple, but her evening gowns 
are often very elaborate. She is generally seen in a small bonnet, 
seldom, if ever, wearing a large hat. Some of her friends accuse her 
of an English taste in dress; but this may be because even when alone 
she always dresses for dinner as for a function. 

During the first month of her husband's incumbency she excited 
considerable comment by saying that a well-dressed woman could 
clothe herself on three hundred dollars a year, setting an example of 
economy in dressing in an age when feminine extravagance in the 
adornment of the person has become proverbial. There was no rea- 
son why ^Irs. Roosevelt should confine herself to that amount of 
money in furnishing her wardrobe, and there is no reason to suppose 
that she does so or would think of doing so in her elevated posi- 
tion; but that she should voice the sentiment and back it by saying 
that a woman has no right to be extravagant, proves that she is as 
honestly outspoken as her husband. 

Of rvlrs. Roosevelt's tact many stories could be told. She has very 
decided opinions as to what she should and should not do, and she 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



417 



manages to carry her point without giving offense to any one. Our 
American habit of indiscriminate hand-shaking is very distasteful to 
her, and she made up her mind when she went to Albany that she 
would not have her hand shaken by the hundreds who pass her at the 
official receptions. Accordingly, at her first reception she charmed 
the crowd with her sweet smile and pleasant words, but both her 
hands were observed to be tightly holding a huge bouquet. 

Nevertheless there is nothing haughty or ungracious about the 
President's wife. She has an unusual cordiality tow^ard every one 
whom she meets, no matter who that person is or what his social 
status may be. 

Toward her husband her attitude is that of an affectionate comrade. 
Strong and self-poised they stand up together, an ideal pair. She is 
the type of woman who binds on her husband's sword and watches 
him go forth to war with a proud smile. During the terrible and 
trying days of the Spanish-American War she remained at Sagamore 
Hill with her children, her entire strength absorbed in keeping them 
happy and hopeful, and not until her husband returned did she relax. 
The collapse was complete then, and for a time there was much 
anxiety felt for her. 

With her children she seems almost like an elder sister. Both of 
the Roosevefts believe in allowing children great freedom of action. 
They are all sturdy, strong-willed young things, who have been used 
to roam the hills around Oyster Bay without let or hindrance clad in 
no more aristocratic garments than overalls and sweaters. The nine- 
year-old Ethel has worn the raiment of masculinity as often as she 
chose to assume it. The children are devoted to pets, and the gardens 
at Sagamore Hill are a small menagerie of guinea-pigs, squirrels, 
turtles, cats, dogs and ponies. The entire collection had to be re- 
moved to Albany, the children absolutely refusing to part with any of 



418 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



it, and it is no doubt already decreed that it shall be transferred to 
Washington, to the last guinea-pig. 

Miss AHce Roosevelt, the young lady daughter of the house, is a 
tall, blonde girl of eighteen, who promises to develop into a beauty. 
She is a girl who, as her father expresses it, ''simply cannot stay in 
the house and sit in a rocking-chair.'' She rides, drives, skates, 
shoots, plays golf, enjoys a winter run on snow-shoes, and is, withal, 
a most dainty and feminine young woman. 

'Ted, Junior," as he is universally known, was thirteen years old 
at the time of his father's elevation to the Presidency, and the fall 
of 1901 entered school at Groton, Massachusetts, where he will pre- 
pare for Harvard. He is very Hke his father in character as well as 
person. The younger children accompanied their parents to Wash- 
ington; little Ethel under a governess; Ouentin still a baby. The two 
boys, Kermit and Archibald, are school boys. 

The President's home life was always sincerely homely and 
domestic, and learning what was good and avoiding what was not 
good has characterized him and Mrs. Roosevelt in their plan of home 
education for their children. It has always been an American house- 
hold, love of country being early instilled into . the minds of the 
children; and yet Mr. Roosevelt's Americanism has by some critics 
been called the "swashbuckleer kind." 

The fact is, Mr. Roosevelt's patriotism is of the kind that makes 
for civilization. He is an ardent believer in the Monroe Doctrine and 
in its rigid enforcement. At the meeting of the Social Reform Club 
in New York on March 4, 1897, Mr. E. D. Page, in introducing him 
to speak, referred to him as a "gladiator." Mr. Roosevelt responded: 

"I keenly realize that to accompUsh anything in this world there 
must be fighting of a certain kind. I beheve it should be resorted to 
as a last expedient. My own desire is for more gentle methods," 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



419 



Before the Holland Society, on January 15, 1896, Mr. Roosevelt 
said, "You want to teach some people the elementary virtue of 
* patriotism, and that laws put on the statute books should be en- 
forced." 

In his eflfort to better the police condition of New York, Mr. 
Roosevelt very frequently stated his position, but clamor of those 
who opposed him seemed for a time to> overwhelm his views. Listen 
to some of them. 

On January 20, 1896, he said to a gathering of Methodist 
ministers: "We have refused to> allow the police force to be used in 
any way to help any politician of any party or any faction of a party, 
and therefore those politicians, the breath of whose nostrils is cor- 
ruption, naturally hate us, and wish to see us driven from power. It 
rests with the decent citizens of the State to say whether their repre- 
sentatives at Albany shall do the bidding of the Hquor-seller and the 
ward-heeler and turn us out of office because we have honestly 
enforced the laws, and have declined to relax them in favor of any 
kind of vice or any kind of lawbreaker." 

If this is "swashbuckling Americanism" it is a very good sort of the 
kind, and might be emulated to advantage by many other citizens of 
the country, and many who hold offices of a public nature. On 
October 23d the President was made a Doctor of Laws during Yale 
College bi-centennial celebrations. The city of New Haven was 
Yale-mad. Schools, factories and stores were closed, while the towns- 
people thronged the streets to do honor to the President of the 
United States, the guest of the university. 

President Roosevelt and party arrived .on time at 9.30, after an 
hour's run from Farmington, where a considerable company of people 
had gathered to bid him good-by. 

The stay of President Roosevelt at Farmington was marked by an 
amusing incident, illustrating his democratic spirit. While Mr. 



420 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



Roosevelt was out driving the party had reached the top of the 
Tunxis Mountain and the President suggested they take a short walk. 
While strolling along, the President espied Deacon Barber corraling 
a herd of cows which were trespassing on a neighbor's field. 

"What are you doing there?" shouted the President. 

"Vm trying to get these cattle out of the near field," replied the 
deacon. 

'Til help you." And he began to chase the cattle into their pasture. 
Some of the President's party assisted in the work. 

''I never see sich sport," declared the deacon as he proudly related 
the incident to his friends later. 

President Hadley, of Yale, and Mayor John P. Studley were on 
hand to receive the distinguished guest on arrival, and after an ex- 
change of greetings, briefly, the ride toward the university campus 
was begun by way of State and Chapel Streets. The escort included 
a representation of the naval and military forces of the State. 

Upon arrival at the campus the President was conducted to Battell 
Chapel, and after a brief rest there w^as escorted to his place in the 
academic procession of learned doctors, masters of art, distinguished 
guests of the university and graduates. There were thousands in the 
line, all dressed in academic gowns, many of which were faced with 
colors indicative of their wearer's degrees. W^ay for the procession 
through the crowds w^hich filled the street near the campus was made 
by the military escort. 

President Roosevelt and President Hadley entered the theater at 
10.30. On the platform were Joseph H. Choate, John Hay, Richard 
Olney, Chief Justice Melville AV. Fuller and Justice Brewer, of the 
Uniter States Supreme Court; Presidents Eliot, of Harvard; Patton, 
of Princeton; Faunce, of Brown; Harper, of Chicago; Provost Har- 
rison, of Pennsylvania, and other college presidents besides literary 
men and churchmen of distinction. Admiral Sampson, apparently in 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



421 



ill-health, did not enter with the procession. He made his way to his 
place through a side door, and leaning on the arm of Professor W. W. 
Farnum, was show^n his seat. 

The presentation of candidates for honorary degrees followed the 
commemorative address and the function occupied about one hour. 
President Hadley was extraordinarily felicitous in the delicate compli- 
ments he conveyed to the distinguished candidates. Secretary John 
Hay, Joseph H. Choate, Chief Justice Fuller, Archbishop Ireland, 
Mark Twain, Seth Low and Rear Admiral Sampson received tre- 
mendous ovations. 

Then follow^ed a list of the degrees in the order in which the candi- 
dates were presented. When the long list had been finished President 
Hadley advanced a step or two and with great impressiveness said: 

''There yet remains one name." 

In an instant the great audience was standing. The President of 
the United States also arose and the theater rang with cheers. The 
air was filled with waving kerchiefs and programmes. 

Remarking that Yale had chosen for the degree this candidate 
before he became President, President Hadley announced that all 
Yale men were now doubly honored by greeting the man and the 
President as a son of Yale. Specially addressing President Roose- 
velt, President Hadley spoke as follows: 

'Theodore Roosevelt, while you were yet a private citizen v;e 
oft'ered you most w^orthily the degree of LL. D. Since in His Provi- 
dence, it has pleased God to give Theodore Roosevelt another title, 
we give him on that account a double portion of welcome. He is a 
Harvard man by nurture, but we are proud to think that in his demo- 
cratic spirit, his broad national sym.pathies and above all his clean- 
ness and purity and truth, he will be glad to be an adopted son of 
Yale." 



422 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



President Roosevelt advanced, bowed profoundly, and tried to- 
speak. Again the audience cheered, and it was fully a minute before 
he was allowed to proceed. He said: 

''President Hadley: I have never yet worked at a task worth 
doing that .1 did not find myself working shoulder to shoulder with 
some son of Yale. I have never yet been in a struggle for righteous- 
ness and decency that there were not men of Yale to aid me and give 
me strength and courage. 

''As we w^alked hither this morning we passed by a gateway which 
was raised to the memory of a young Yale lad who was hurt to death 
beside me, as he and a great many others like us marched against the 
gunfire from the heights, and with those memories quick in my mind 
I thank you from my heart for the honor you have done me, and I 
thank you doubly, for you planned to do me that honor while I was 
yet a private citizen." 

The hymn "America" was sung and the audience dispersed. 

The concert by the Boston Orchestra at the Hyperion Theater 
took place at 2.30 o'clock this afternoon. The concert included five 
numbers, all from the old masters, and Wilhelm Gericke conducted. 
Miss Milka Ternina was the soloist. At 4 P. M. Woodbridge Hall, 
the new administration building presented to the university by the 
Misses Stokes, was dedicated. President Hadley presided. The 
dedicatory address was delivered by Donald Grant Mitchell, LL.D. 
(Ik Marvel). On account of the advanced age of the speaker the 
address was delivered from h^s chair at the suggestion of Dr. Hadley. 

President Roosevelt did not attend the early afternoon exercises 
of the celebration. After the ceremonies of conferring the degrees 
were completed he was driven to the home of W. W. Farnum, on 
PrO'Spect Hill. The crowds almost blocked the streets as the party 
with its escort passed, and many hundreds swarmed along after the 
carriage and obtained the coveted glimpse of the President. 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



425 



The Farnam residence is located on a broad rise of ground, and 
high hedges and fences surround the estate. Policemen and detec- 
tives stood guard at the gates and about the house and no one was 
admitted. 

A farewell reception was given by President and Mrs. Hadley at 
5 o'clock this afternoon, but the presence of the President of the 
United States, who assisted President and Mrs. Hadley in receiving, 
lent a far greater impressiveness to the occasion. 

President Roosevelt and Dr. and j\Irs. Hadley stood upon a small 
raised platform midway to one side of the hall. Commander and Mrs. 
Cowles and Private Secretary Cortelyou stood to the rear of the re- 
ceiving party. Close at hand were secret service officers, ushers and 
policemen and those in charge of the ceremonies The purpose was 
to admit only those wearing badges. These numbered several thou- 
sand, and a great number of the general uninvited public also 
managed to gain entrance. 

Particularly noticeable was the extreme caution not only of the 
officers but of those having the affair in charge for the adequate pro- 
tection of the President. 

The most unique and original feature of the reception was the fact 
that there was no hand shaking. The suggestion to eliminate this 
old time custom originated with President and Mrs. Hadley, and was 
readily adopted by the President after consultation with Secretary 
Cortelyou. 

It is estimated that 5,000 persons attended the reception. At its 
conclusion the President returned to the Farnam residence. 

At II o'clock the President re-entered his carriage and, again 
escorted by the mounted police, was driven to the station. The Presi- 
dent's car w^as attached to the night Federal express through train for 
Washington. 

This was the first social outing of the President, and as such de- 
serves the space allotted to it, though he was yet to have the seasons 



426 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



at the Capital, where all that is magnificent was to be put in operation 
when the President of the United States was expected. 

Mr. Roosevelt's bearing during the period of mourning had in- 
spired both personal esteem and official trust. The country felt 
assured that the calamity it had suffered had left its institutions un- 
shaken, its liberal policies unchanged and that the government would 
gO' forward as its best wishers would have it, guided by a patriotic 
spirit, in the way of peace, security and honor. 

Rarely had a change of Presidents involved so little in the adminis- 
tration. When Vice-President Tyler succeeded on the death of 
President Harrison, there was no immediate change in the Cabinet, 
and Mr. Webster remained at its head for two years, during which 
time the Ashburton treaty was negotiated. The disintegration of 
the Cabinet began, however, within a few months and Tyler's ad- 
ministration departed widely from the lines that Harrison was ex- 
pected to pursue. Mr. Fillmore formed his own Cabinet promptly, 
recalling Mr. W ebster in Mr. Clayton's place. On Andrew Johnson's 
accession, on the other hand, the whole Cabinet remained, and the 
breach with Congress that followed was attributable as much to the 
President's personality as to his poHcy. It is not to be forgotten that 
in Johnson's administration the first acquisition of detached territory 
was made by the United States, by the Secretary who had served with 
Lincoln. 

The change from Garfield to Arthur disturbed party leadership 
more than public policy. Some changes in personal influence were 
likely to result -from Roosevelt's succession, but the factional divisions 
as they were then and had been to a large degree obliterated at the 
time, while the clearly expressed purpose of the -new President to 
continue the administration of his predecessor without change shuts 
the door upon the self-seeking intrigue that usually accompanies a 
change in the Presidential office. There was no uncertainty about 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



427 



Mr. Roosevelt's resolute hostility to the doctrine of spoils. Only the 
incapable and unfit need be afraid of him and it was only for the 
improvement of the service that he might be expected to make new 
appointments. The country was absolutely assured against the de- 
moralizing abuse of public patronage and the mere spoilsmen would 
have little opportunity to disturb the new President in his public 
duties. 

The members of the Cabinet had all been closely associated with 
the deserved success of the McKinley administration and their re- 
tention of office contributed greatly to the confidence with which the 
country greeted its new Chief Executive. It was to Air. Hay that v;e 
very largely owed that judicious diplomatic policy that had gained for 
this nation the respect of all the world, and in harmony with Mr. 
Roosevelt's own stalwart Americanism we might expect this broad 
pohcy to extend more and more the influence of the United States, 
gaining new conquests of peace in security and honor. 

Mr. Root's wise and skillful guidance of the War Department, 
which never before, even in time of actual hostilities, held so influ- 
ential a place in the work of the administration, had proved of the 
utmost value and imiportance, while the most essential domestic in- 
terests were reassured against any disturbance of policy by Mr. Gage's 
continued direction of the Treasury. At this juncture of af¥airs, these 
three were the dominant figures of the administration, under the 
President himself, and their presence in the Cabinet gave a convic- 
tion of strength and security that was of incalculable benefit to the 
nation, at home and abroad. 

Thus the country, as the cloud of public and personal bereavement 
lifted, started on its way again with buoyant confidence. "The good 
work will go on," said McKinley, and when Theodore Roosevelt 
assumed the office of Chief Executive there was little fear that 
through any action of his there would be any retarding oi that 



428 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



efficiency which had brought the country to a lofty plain of prosperity, 
and the admiration and respect of other powers. 

President Roosevelt is an old-fashioned American. Though in so 
many ways a typical modern man, he is at heart and in essentials far 
nearer the old type of American statesman than the majority of the 
men who have presided over America during the last sixty years. Mr. 
Lincoln was a man of genius, and so an exception to every rule, but, 
save for Mr. Lincoln and General Grant, the modern Presidents have 
not been men of mark. They have been sound and excellent constitu- 
tional Monarchs, but not leaders and rulers of men. Mr. Roosevelt 
is far more like the men of the first three decades of the Repubhc 
than the Convention-made Presidents of modern times. When it 
is said he is an old-fashioned American we mean that he belongs to 
that strong, vigorous, authoritative type which has always existed in 
America, and always been apparent enough in business and in private 
life, though of late it has been somewhat submerged in politics. He 
is essentially one of those men who know exactly what they Vv'ant, 
and mean to get it. But together with this intensity and keenness the 
new President is a man of moderation. Those who can recall the last 
Message sent by him to the Legislature of the State of New York 
while Governor may remember how essentially moderate was its 
general tone. Especially is this moderation of tone to be seen in all 
his expressions of opinion on such home questions as those of the 
Trusts, temperance legislation, and the Tariff. He has always held 
in regard to the Trusts that the capitalists have done a great deal of 
good in organizing industry, and that they must not be treated as 
enemies of the nation. At the same time, however, they are to be 
carefully w^atched and kept within reasonable bounds. In regard to 
temperance and philanthropic legislation generally, Mr. Roosevelt 
has again, always maintained the position of the zia media. Ap- 
parently it is the same with the question of Protection. Mr. Roose- 
velt, though he has never put forward Free-trade as an ideal and has 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



429 



always upheld the existing fiscal system, has never been a Protection- 
at-any-price man. Even in the case of Imperialism and a vigorous 
foreign policy, Mr. Roosevelt has never gone to extremes, and he 
has frequently denounced the recklessness of the more violent men. 
In truth, there is a great deal of the old Whig moderation — we use 
the term rather in the English than the American sense^about Mr. 
Roosevelt. That is the spirit which dislikes extremes in all cases, 
which is against pushing even a good principle or a good policy too 
far, and is in favor of keeping all things within the bounds of common 
sense. But this spirit is a very different one from that of the op- 
portunist or the man of perennial compromise. The true Whig 
when he has discovered what he believes to be the path of moderation 
in any question will stick to it through thick and thin. His views may 
be ''central," but they are none the less tenaciously held, and history 
has shown again and again that the Whig temperament may be both 
authoritative and uncompromising in action. Lord Palmerston was a 
good example of the authoritative Whig, and, unless we are mistaken, , 
Mr. Roosevelt will show in a good many ways a striking resemblance 
to Lord Palmerston. Of course, no two men are ever quite alike, but 
impulsiveness combined with an abstract moderation of view, and 
authoritativeness coupled with a strict recognition of law and con- 
stitutional right, undoubtedly belong to both characters. 

The essential thing to remember in regard to Mr. Roosevelt's posi- 
tion as to foreign affairs is that he is an upholder of the Monroe Doc- 
trine in its fullest and most complete form. All his writings and 
speeches show that he considers that America must prevent the 
European Powers obtaining any new foothold in North or South 
America, or extending the settlements they now possess in any form, 
direct or indirect. His view, that is, is to enforce the full Monroe 
Doctrine at all costs. 



430 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



And now the cO'Untry was in charge of a man young in years, but 
not young in all those essentials that go to form a wise statesman 
and a just ruler. The graduate of Harvard, saying that every man 
should assist in governing his country by governing himself; the 
Assemblyman caring for the honest interests of his State; the Police 
Commissioner, suppressing corruption and blackmail; the x\ssistant 
Secretary of the Navy, urging the Cabinet and the two Houses to 
adopt the W^'ashingtonian maxim as to preparing for war in time of 
peace; the Rough Rider, going to war to fight the foe of his country; 
the governor of a great State, insisting upon the passing of bills that 
should benefit the people — this man was now President, and there 
was every asurance that under him the administration of the affairs 
of the country would redound for the betterment om the land, and 
that the miUions of citizens in the North, the South, the East and the 
West, would continue to speak with pride the name of Theodore 
Roosevelt. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

The Negro Problem in America — Booker T. Washington, the Ablest Man 
of His Race — The Colored People to Develop On Their Own Lines — 

President Roosevelt's First Message to Congress — An Era of Peace 
and Good Feeling — Anarchy — Business Interests — Trusts — Exclusion of Cheap 

Labor — The TarifY — Reciprocity — Gold Standard — Hawaii, Porto Rico, 
Cuba — The Philippines — Monroe Doctrine — Army and Navy — Merit System — 

Indian Tribes — Postal Service — "Open Door" — Our Policy to Continue 
Unbroken. 

WHEN the politicians and the newspapers were, in the first 
month of Mr. Roosevelt's incumbency, speaking of his 
forthcoming Message and believing that it would follow 
on the lines of the Presidential messages of his predeces- 
sors in office, an incident occurred which called forth some criticism, 
especially in the South. 

Booker T. Washington, the negro philanthropist, was invited to 
dinner at the White House. The invitation came from the President, 
who was entirely within his right, whatever his motive; and if his 
motive was to weaken a prejudice by defying it, and he expected the 
consequent outburst of irritation, and was unmoved by the expecta- 
tion, he did a very noble act. The President by his act had no desire 
to set the black man as the equal of the white man. He washed to 
further the good condition of the colored race, as Booker T. Wash- 
mgton so long preached and wrote. But there could be no question 
of equality on social lines. 

Booker T. Washington, of w^hom we wish to speak with all respect 
as perhaps the ablest man of his race, himself recently acknowledged 
this in a public speech which made a deep impression, not only on his 

hearers, but all through the Union. At any rate, this solution is 

431 



432 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



strongly urged by a negro writer in a very able paper in Leslie s 
Weekly. He desires to keep the races entirely apartj and to let each 
develop on its own lines, while keeping a respectful distance h-om the 
other. It is through strict but kindly segregation that, in the present 
exceptional circumstances, the road to peace between the races lies, 
a segregation which each should accept as made by laws over which 
neither of them has any power. 

Reform, which had been the motive in every political position he 
had held, actuated President Roosevelt in inviting to his private 
table a man who, no matter what his race or color, worked hard and 
tirelessly for that race, and was an intelligent and good citizen with the 
welfare of several million dusky-skinned brothers at heart. The negro 
problem was one that must be recognized in the United States, and 
what was more fitting than that the supreme executive should recog- 
nize in the most complimentary and respectful manner a man who 
believed that he stood nearer to the solving of that problem than any 
one else? Years had gone by since the Civil War, and failure had 
attended every large effort to* deal successfully with the race emanci- 
pated by that war; and in his speeches and writings Mr. Roosevelt 
had endeavored to urge the amelioration of conditions concerning the 
negro and a means of placing the race on a footing of self-respect 
and substantial success, while putting down their wrongdoing, which 
was the outcome of the license engendered by idleness and hopeless- 
ness of the encouragement of the world at large. 

The first message of President Roosevelt w^as bound to receive 
more than the ordinary degree of attention which the country bestows 
upon such documents. Sent to Congress December 3d, it gave his 
countrymen an opportunity such as they had not hitherto had to 
measure his capacities for the vast responsibilities suddenly and un- 
expectedly thrust upon him. 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



435 



Such a state paper on such an occasion was valuable not simply as 
an expression of the policy and purpose of an administration, but as 
an index in part to the character and methods of a President who 
was still regarded as a new figure in the large affairs of national 
politics. 

It was only a little more than eleven weeks since Theodore Roose- 
velt entered the White House under the shadow of a national calamity 
and with all the respect everywhere conceded to his integrity, there 
was much uncertainity as to the manner of man he might prove him- 
self to be in the Presidential office. His immediate utterance that he 
would follow promptly and unquestionably the principles and policies 
which had guided the administration of his successor was the one and 
only line of conduct which he formally and publicly proclaimed. 
Since that time his personal acts had as a rule been uniformly in keep- 
ing with that promise and had tended to inspire confidence in the 
sobriety as w^ell as the sincerity and honesty of his judgment. 

The pith of the message may be summed up thus: 

''Anarchy is a crime against the whole human race; and all man- 
kind should band against the Anarchist." 

'Tn dealing with business interests, for the Government to under- 
take" by crude and ill-considered legislation to do what miay turn out 
to be bad, would be to incur the risk of such far-reaching national 
disasters that it would be preferable to undertake nothing at all." 

"The first essential in determining how^ to deal with the great in- 
dustrial combinations is knowledge of the facts — pubHcity." 

"Corporations and joint stock or other corporations, depending 
upon any statutory law for their existence or privileges, should be 
subject to proper Govermental supervision." 

"There shonld be created a Cabinet officer to be known a« Secre- 
tary of Commerce and Industries." 



436 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



''I regard it as necessary to re-enact immediately the law excluding 
Chinese laborers." 

'The most vital problem the world has to deal with is Labor." 

"Educational and economic tests in a wise immigration law should 
be designed to protect and elevate the general body politic." 

"Reciprocity must be treated as the handmaiden of protection. 
Our first duty is tO' see that the protection granted by the tariff in 
every case where it is needed is maintained, and that reciprocity be 
sought for so far as it can safely be done without injury to our home 
industries." 

"The American merchant marine should be restored to the ocean." 
"The utmost care should be taken not to reduce the revenues so 
that there will be any possibility of a deficit." 
"The Interstate law should be amended." 

"The forest and water problems are perhaps the most vital internal 
questions." 

"There is vital need of providing for a substantial reduction in the 
tariff duties on Cuban imports into the United States." 

"While we will do everything in our power for the Filipino who is 
peaceful, we will take the sternest measures with the Filipino insur- 
recto and ladrone." 

"No single great material work which remains to be undertaken 
on this continent is of such consequence to the American people as 
the building of a canal across the Isthm.us." 

"There must be no territorial aggrandizem.ent by any non- Ameri- 
can Power at the expense of any American Power on American soil." 

"The work of upbuilding the navy must be steadily continued. No 
one point of our policy, foreign or domestic, is more important than 
this to the honor and material welfare,, and, above all, to the peace of 
our nation in the future." 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



437 



''It is not necessary to increase our army beyond its present size, 
but it is necessary to keep it at the highest point of efficiency." 

''Every promotion and every detail under the War Department 
must be made solely with regard to the good of the service and the 
merit of the man himself." 

"The merit system of appointments should be extended wherever 
possible." 

After a fine tribute to Mr. McKinley and abhorrence of the manner 
of his death at the hands of an anarchist, the Message says: 

"I earnestly recommend to the Congress that in the exercise of its 
wise discretion is should take into consideration the coming to this 
country of Anarchists or persons professing principles hostile to all 
government and justifying the murder of those placed in authority. 
Such individuals as those who not long ago gathered in open meeting 
to glorify the murder of King Humbert of Italy perpetrate a crime, 
and the laAv should insure their rigorous punishment. They and 
those like them should be kept out of this country; and if fo^und here 
they should be promptly deported to the country whence they came; 
and far-reaching provision should be made for the punishment of 
those who stay. No matter calls more urgently for the wisest thought 
of the Congress. 

"The Federal Courts should be given jurisdiction over any man 
who kills or attempts to kill the President or any man w^ho by the 
Constitution or by law is in line of succession for the Presidency, 
while the punishment for an unsuccessful attempt sho'uld be pro- 
portioned to the enormity of the O'ffense against our institutions. 

"Anarchy is a crime against the whole human race; and all mankind 
should band against the Anarchist. His crime should be made an 
offense against the law of nations, like piracy and that form of man- 
stealing known as the slave trade, for it is of far blacker infamy than 
either. It should be so declared by treaties among all civilized 



438 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



Powers. Such treaties would give to the Federal Government the 
power of dealing with the crime. 

''A grim commentary upon the folly of the Anarchist position was 
afforded by the attitude of the law towards this very criminal who had 
just taken the life of the President. The people would have torn him 
limb from limb if it had not been that the law he defied was at once 
invoked in his behalf. So' far from his deed being committed on 
behalf of the people against the Government, the Government was 
obliged at once to exert its full police power to save him from instant 
death at the hands of the people. Moreover, his deed worked not the 
slightest dislocation in our governmental system, and the danger of a 
recurrence of such deeds, no matter how great it might grow, would 
work only in the direction of strengthening and giving harshness to 
the forces of order. No man will ever be restrained from becoming 
President by any fear as to his personal safety. If the risk to the 
President's life becamie great, it would mean that the office would 
more and more come to be filled by men of a spirit which would make 
them resolute and merciless in dealing with every friend of disorder. 
This great country will not fall into anarchy, and if Anarchists should 
ever become a serious menace to its institutions, they would not 
merely be stamped out, but -would involve in their own ruin every 
active or passive sympathizer with their doctrines. The American 
people are slow to wrath, but v/hen their wrath is once kindled it 
burns like a consuming flame." 

In dealing with business interests: 

'The tremendous and highly complex industrial development 
which went on with ever accelerated rapidity during the latter half 
of the nineteenth century brings us face to face, at the beginning of 
the twentieth, with very serious social problems. The old laws, and 
the old customs which had almost the binding force of law, were once 
quite sufficient to regulate the accumulation and distribution of 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



439 



wealth. Since the industrial changes which have so enormously in- 
creased the productive power of mankind, they are no longer 
sufficient. 

"The growth of cities has gone on beyond comparison faster than 
the growth of the country, and the upbuilding of the great industrial 
centers has meant a startling increase, not merely in the aggregate of 
wealth, but in the number of very large individual, and especially of 
very large corporate, fortunes. The creation of these great corporate 
fortunes has not been due to the tariff nor to any other governmental 
action, but to natural causes in the business world, operating in other 
countries as they operate in our own. 

"The process has aroused much antagonism, a great part of which 
is wholly without warrant. It is not true that as the rich have grown 
richer the poor have grown poorer. On the contrary, never before 
has the average man, the wage-w^orker, the farmer, the small trader, 
been so well off as in this country and at the present time. There 
have been abuses connected with the accumulation of wealth; yet it 
remains true that a fortune accumulated in legitimate business can be 
accumulated by the person specially benefited only on condition of 
conferring immense incidental benefits upon others. Successful 
enterprise, of the type which benefits all mankind, can only exist if the 
conditions are such as to offer great prizes as the rewards of success. 

"The captains of industry, who have driven the railway^ systems 
across this continent, who have built up our commerce, who have 
developed our manufactures, have on the whole done great good to 
our people. Without them the material development of which we are 
so justly proud could never have taken place. Moreover, we should 
recognize the immense importance to- this material development of 
leaving as unhampered as is compatible wath the public good the 
strong and forceful men upon whom the success of business opera- 
tions inevitably rests. The slightest study of business conditions will 



440 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



satisfy any one capable of forming a judgment that the personal equa- 
tion is the most important factor in a business operation, that the 
business ability of the man at the head of any business concern, big 
or little, is usually the factor which fixes the gulf between striking 
success and hopeless failure. 

''An additional reason for caution in dealing with corporations is 
to be found in the international commercial conditions of to-day. 
The same business conditions which have produced the aggregations 
oi corporate and individual wealth have made them very potent 
factors in international commercial com^petition. Business concerns 
which have the largest means at their disposal and are managed by 
the ablest men are naturally those which take the lead in the strife 
for commercial supremacy among the nations of the world. America 
has only just begun to assume that commanding position in the inter- 
national business world which we believe will more and m.ore be hers. 
It is of the utmost importance that this position be not jeoparded, 
especially at a tim.e when the overflowing abundance of our own 
natural resources and the skill, business energy, and mechanical apti- 
tude of our people m.ake foreign markets essential. Under such con- 
ditions it would be most unwise to cramp or to fetter the youthful 
strength of our nation. ^ . * ^ 

"The mechanism of modern business is so delicate that extreme 
care mu^st be taken not to interfere with it in a spirit of rashness or 
ignorance. }dany of those who have made it their vocation to de- 
nounce the great industrial combinations which are popularlv, 
although with technical inaccuracy, known as '"'trusts,'' appeal especi- 
ally to hatred and fear. These are precisely the two emotions, par- 
ticularly when combined with ignorance, which unfit m.en for the 
exercise of cool and steady judgment. In facing new industrial con- 
ditions, the whole history of the world shov/s that legislation will 
generally be both unwise and ineftective unless undertaken after calm 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



44i 



inquiry and with sober self-restraint. Much of the legislation directed 
at the trusts would have been exceedingly mischievous had it not also^ 
been entirely ineffective. In accordance with the well-known socio- 
logical law, the ignorant or reckless agitator has been the really 
effective friend of the evils which he has been nominally opposing. 
In dealing with business interests, for the Government to undertake 
by crude and ill-considered legislation to dO' what may turn out to be 
bad, would be to incur the risk of such far-reaching national disaster 
that it would be preferable to undertake nothing at all. The men 
who demand the impossible or the undesirable serve as the allies of 
the forces with which they are nominally at war, for they hamper 
those who vv^ould endeavor to find out in rational fashion what the 
wrongs really are and to what extent and in what manner it is practi- 
cable to apply remedies. 

"All this is true; and yet it is also true that there are real and grave 
evils, one of the chief being over-capitalization because of its many 
baleful consequences; and a resolute and practical effort must be 
made to correct these evils. 

'There is a widespread conviction in the minds of the American 
people that the great corporations known as trusts are in certain of 
their features and tendencies hurtful to the general welfare. This 
springs from no spirit of envy or uncharitableness, nor lack of pride 
in the great industrial achievements that have placed this country at 
the head of the nations struggling for commercial supremacy. It 
does not rest upon a lack of intelligent appreciation of the necessity 
of meeting changing and changed conditions of trade with new 
methods, nor upon ignorance of the fact that combination of capital 
in the effort to accomplish great things i& necessary when the world's 
progress demands that great things be done. It is based upon sincere 
conviction that combination and concentration should be, not pro- 
hibited, but supervised and within reasonable limxits controlled; and 
in my judgment this conviction is right. 



442 



THEODORE ROOSEVELt. 



"It is no limitation upon property rights or freedom of contract to 
require that when men receive from Government the privilege of 
doing business under corporate form, which frees them from indi- 
vidual responsibility, and enables them tO' call into their enterprises 
the capital of the public, they shall do so upon absolutely truthful 
representations as to the value of the property in which the capital 
is to be invested. Corporations engaged in interstate commerce 
should be regulated if they are found to exercise a license working to 
the public injury. It should be as much the aim of those who seek 
for social betterment to rid the business world of crimes of cunning 
as to rid the entire body politic of crimes of violence. Great cor- 
porations exist only because they are created and safeguarded by our 
institutions; and it is therefore our right and our duty to see that they 
work in harmony wnth these institutions. 

"The first essential in determining how to deal with the great in- 
dustrial combinations is knowledge of the facts — publicity. In the 
interest of the public, the Government should have the right to in- 
spect and examine the workings of the great corporations engaged 
in interstate business. PubHcity is the only sure remedy which we 
can now invoke. What further remedies are needed in the way of 
governmental regulation, or taxation, can only be determined after 
pubHcity has been obtained, by process of law, and in the course of 
administration. The first requisite is knowledge, full and complete 
— knowledge which may be made pubHc to the world. * * * 

'There should be created a Cabinet oflicer, to be known as Secre- 
tary of Commerce and Industries, as provided in the bill introduced 
at the last session of the Congress. It should be his province to deal 
with commerce in its broadset sense, including among other things 
whatever concerns labor and all matters affecting the great business 
corporations and our merchant marine." 



GOVERNOR ROOSKVK1.T AT HOME, OYSTER BAY, LONG ISLAND 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



445 



The Chinese exclusion law should be re-enacted, for the American 
wage- earner must be protected against cheap labor. The Chinese 
and ilhterate foreigners should be debarred. 

''Our present immigration laws are unsatisfactory. We need every 
honest and efficient immigrant fitted to become an American citizen, 
every immigrant who comes here to stay, who brings here a strong 
body, a stout heart, a good head, and a resolute purpose to do his 
duty well in every way and to bring up his children as law-abiding and 
God-fearing members of the community. But there should be a com- 
prehensive law enacted with the object of working a threefold im- 
provement over our present system. First, we should aim to exclude 
absolutely not only all persons who are known to be believers in 
anarchistic principles or members of anarchistic societies, but also all 
persons who are of a low moral tendency or of unsavory reputation. 
This means that we must require a more thorough system of inspec- 
tion abroad and a more rigid system of examination at our immigra- 
tion ports, the former being especially necessary. 

'The second object of a proper immigration la,w ought to be to 
secure by a careful and not merely perfunctory educational test some 
intelligent capacity to appreciate American institutions and act sanely 
as American citizens. This would not keep out all Anarachists, for 
many of them belong to the intelligent criminal class. But it would 
do what is also in point, that is, tend to decrease the sum of ignorance, 
so potent in producing the envy, suspicion, malignant passion, and 
hatred of order, out of which anarchistic sentiment inevitably springs. 
Finally, all persons should be excluded who are below a certain 
standard of economic fitness to enter our industrial field as com- 
petitors with American labor. There should be proper proof of per- 
sonal capacity to earn an American living and enough money to 
insure a decent start under American conditions. This would stop 
the influx of cheap labor, and the resulting competition which gives 



446 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



rise to so much of bitterness in American industrial life; and it would 
dry up the springs of the pestilential social conditions in our great 
cities, where anarchistic organizations have their greatest possibility 
of growth. 

"Both the educational and economic tests in a wise immigration 
law should be designed to protect and elevate the general body politic 
and social. A very close supervision should be exercised over the 
steamship companies which mainly bring over the immigrants, and 
they should be held to a strict accountabiHty for any infraction of the 
law." 

The Message is against tariff changes — Reciprocity should go as 
the handmaiden of Protection. 

"Our first duty is to see that the protection granted by the tariff 
in every case where it is needed is maintained, and that reciprocity 
be sought for so far as it can safely be done without injury to our 
home industries. Just how far this is must be determined according to 
the individual case, remembering always that every application of our 
tariff policy to meet our shifting national needs must be conditioned 
upon the cardinal fact that the duties must never be reduced below 
the point that wiU cover the difference between the labor cost here 
and abroad. The well-being of the wage-worker is a prime considera- 
tion of our entire policy of economic legislation. 

"Subject to this proviso of the proper protection necessary to our 
industrial well-being at home, the principle of reciprocity must com- 
mand our hearty support. The phenomenal growth of our export 
trade emphasizes the urgency of the need for wider markets and for 
a liberal policy in dealing with foreign nations. Whatever is merely 
petty^and vexatious in the way of trade restrictions should be avoided. 
The customers to whom wt dispose of our surplus products in the 
long run, directly or indirectly, purchase those surplus products by 
giving us something in return. Their ability to purchase our products 
should as far as possible be secured by so arranging our tariff as to 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



447 



enable us to take from them those products which we can use without 
harm to our own industries and labor, or the use of which will be of 
marked benefit to us. 

"It is most important that we should maintain the high level of our 
present prosperity. We have now reached the point in the develop- 
ment of our interests where we are not only able tO' supply our own 
markets, but to produce a constantly growing surplus, for which we 
must find markets abroad. To secure these markets we can utilize 
existing duties in any case where they are no longer needed for the 
purpose of protection, or in any case where the article is not produced 
here and the duty is no longer necessary for revenue, as giving us 
something to offer in exchange for what we ask. The cordial rela- 
tions with other nations which are so desirable will naturally be pro- 
moted by the course thus required by our own interests. 

'The natural line oi development for a policy of reciprocity will 
be in connection with those of our productions which no longer 
require all of the support once needed to establish them upon a sound 
basis, and with those others where either because of natural or of 
economic causes we are beyond the reach of successful competition." 

Our merchant marine should be built up. At the present time it 
is discreditable to us as a nation. As to currency and revenue, the 
gold standard should be maintained and kept within the country's 
income. The Interstate law should be amended, our forests pro- 
tected and arid lands reclaimed. As to Hawaii, Porto Rico, and 
Cuba : 

"In Hawaii our aim must be to develop the Territory on the tra- 
ditional American lines. We do not wash a region of large estates 
tilled by cheap labor; we wish a healthy American community of men 
who themselves till the farms they own. All our legislation for the 
islands should be shaped with this end in view; the well-being of the 
average home-m.aker must afiford the true test of the healthy develop- 



448 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



ment of the islands. The land policy should as nearly as possible be 
modeled on our homestead system. 

"It is a pleasure to say that it is hardly more necessary to report as 
to Porto Rico than as to any State or Territory within our continental 
limits. The island is thriving as never before, and it is being ad- 
ministered efficiently and honestly. Its people are now enjoying 
liberty and order under the protection of the United States, and upon 
this fact we congratulate them and ourselves. Their material welfare 
must be as carefully and zealo'usly considered as the welfare of any 
other portion of our country. We have given them the great gift of 
free access for their products to the markets of the United States. I 
ask the attention of the Congress to the need of legislation concerning 
the public lands of Porto Rico. 

'Tn Cuba such progress has been made towards putting the inde- 
pendent government of the island upon a firm footing that before 
the present session of the Congress closes this will be an accomplished 
fact. Cuba will then start as her own mistress; and to the beautiful 
Queen of the Antilles, as she unfolds this new page of her destiny, we 
extend our heartiest greetings and good wishes. Elsewhere I have 
discussed the question of reciprocity. In the case of Cuba, however, 
there are weighty reasons of morality and of national interest why the 
policy should be held to have a peculiar application, and I most 
earnestly ask your attention to the wisdom, indeed to the vital need, 
of providing for a substantial reduction in the tariff duties on Cuban 
imports into the United States. Cuba has in her Constitution 
affirmed what we desired, that she should stand, in international 
matters, in closer and more friendly relations with us than with any 
other Power; and we are bound by every consideration of honor and 
expediency to pass commercial measures in the interest of her 
material well-being." 

As to the future of the Philippines: 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



449 



"They are very rich tropical islands, inhabited by many varying 
tribes, representing widely different stages of progress towards civili- 
zation. Our earnest effort is to help these people upward along the 
stony and difficult path that leads to self-government. We hope to 
make our administration of the islands ho'uorable to our nation by 
making it of the highest benefit to the Filipinos themselves; and as 
an earnest of what we intend to do, we point to what we have done. 
Already a greater measure of material prosperity and of govermental 
honesty and efficiency has been attained in the Philippines than ever 
before in their history. 

"It is no light task for a nation to achieve the temperamental 
qualities w-ithout which the institutions of free government are but an 
empty mockery. Our people are now successfully governing them- 
selves, because for more than a thousand years they have been slowly 
fitting themselves, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously, 
towards this end. What has taken us thirty generations to achieve, 
we cannot expect to see another race accomplish out of hand, espe- 
cially when large portions of that race start very far behind the point 
which our ancestors had reached even thirty generations ago. In 
dealing with the Philippine people we must show both patience and 
strength, forbearance and steadfast resolution. Our aim is high. 
We do not desire to do for the islanders merely what has elsewhere 
been done for tropic peoples by even the best foreign Governments. 
We hope to do for them what has never before been done for any 
people of the tropics — to make them fit for self-government after the 
fashion of the really free nations. 

"History may safely be challenged to show a single instance in 
which a masterful race such as ours, having been forced by the exigen- 
cies of war to take possession of an ahen land, has behaved to its 
inhabitants with the disinterested zeal for their progress that our 
people have shown in the Philippines. To leave the islands at this 



450 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



time would mean that they would fall into a welter of murderous 
anarchy. Such desertion of duty on our part would be a crime 
against humanity. The character of GoA'ernor Taft and of his asso- 
ciates and subordinates is a proof, if such be needed, of the sincerity 
of our effort to give the islanders a constantly increasing measure of 
self-government, exactly as fast as they show themselves fit to exer- 
cise it. Since the civil government was established not an appoint- 
ment has been made in the islands with any reference to considera- 
tions of political influence, or to aught else save the fitness of the man 
and the needs of the service. 

'Tn our anxiety for the welfare and progress of the Philippines, it 
may be that here and there we have gone too rapidly in giving them 
local self-government. It is on this side that our error, if any, has 
been committed. No competent observer, sincerely desirous of find- 
ing out the facts and influenced only by a desire for the welfare of the 
natives, can assert that we have not gone far enough. We have gone 
to the very verge of safety in hastening the process. To have taken 
a single step farther or faster in advance would have been folly and 
weakness, and might well have been crime. We are extremely 
anxious that the natives shall show the power of governing themselves. 
We are anxious, first for their sakes, and next, because it relieves us 
of a great burden. There need not be the slightest fear of our not 
continuing to give them all the liberty for which they are fit. 

''The only fear is lest in our over-anxiety we give them a degree of 
independence for which they are unfit, thereby inviting reaction and 
disaster. As fast as there is any reasonable hope that in a given dis- 
trict the people can govern themselves, self-government has been 
given in that district. There is not a locality fitted for self-govern- 
ment which has not received it. But it may well be that in certain 
cases it will have to be withdrawn, because the inhabitants show 
themselves unfit to exercise it; such instances have already occurred. 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



451 



In other words, there is not the sHghtest chance of our faihng to show 
a sufficiently humanitarian spirit. The danger comes in the opposite 
direction. 

'There are stih troubles ahead in the islands. The insurrection has 
become an affair of local banditti and marauders, who deserve no 
higher regard than the brigands of portions of the Old World. En- 
couragement, direct or indirect, to these insurrectos stands on the 
same footing as encouragement to hostile Indians in the days when 
w^e still had Indian wars. Exactly as our aim is to give to the Indian 
w^ho remains peaceful the fullest and amplest consideration, but to 
have it understood that we will show no weakness if he goes on the 
warpath, so we must make it evident, unless we are false to our own 
traditions and to the demands of civilization and humanity, that while 
we will do everything in our power for the Filipino who is peaceful, 
we will take the sternest measures with the Filipino who follows the 
path of the insurrecto and the ladrone. 

'The heartiest praise is due to large numbers of the natives of the 
islands for their steadfast loyalty. The Macabebes have been con- 
spicuous for their courage and devotion to the flag. I recommend 
that the Secretary of War be empowered to take some systematic 
action in the way of aiding those of these men Avho are crippled in 
the service, and the families of those who were killed." 

The resources of the islands should be developed, the franchise 
granted, and Pacific cables laid. 

There had been much guesswork both here and abroad as to how 
the Message would deal with the Canal question: 

"No single great material work which remains to be undertaken on 
this continent is of such consequence to the American people as the 
building of a canal across the isthmus connecting North and South 
America. Its importance to the nation is by no means limited merely 
to its material effects upon our business prosperity; and yet with view 
to these effects alone it would be to the last degree important for us 



452 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



immediately to begin it. While its beneficial effects would perhaps 
be most marked upon the Pacific Coast and the Gulf and South 
Atlantic States, it would also greatly benefit other sections. It is 
emphatically a work wdiich it is for the interest of the entire country 
to begin and complete as soon as possible; it is one of those great 
works wdiich only a great nation can undertake with prospects of 
success, and which when done are not only permanent assets in the 
nation's material interests, but standing monuments to its construc- 
tive ability. 

"I am glad to be able to announce to you that our negotiations on 
this subject with Great Britain, conducted on both sides in a spirit of 
friendliness and mutual gop-d will and respect, have resulted in my 
being able to lay before the Senate a treaty which if ratified will enable 
us to begin preparations for an isthmian canal at any time, and which 
guarantees to this nation every right that it has ever asked in con- 
nection with the canal. In this treaty the old Clayton-Bulwer treaty, 
so long recognized as inadequate to sup.ply the base for the construc- 
tion and maintenance of a necessarily American ship canal, is abro- 
gated. It specifically provides that the United States alone shall do 
the work of building and assume the responsibility of safeguarding 
the canal and shall regulate its neutral use by all nations on terms of 
equality without the guaranty or interference of any outside nation 
from any quarter. The signed treaty will at once be laid before the 
Senate, and if approved the Congress can then proceed to give effect 
to the advantages it secures us by providing for the building of the 
canal." 

The Monroe Doctrine means peace, unless an aggressor makes it 
hostile: 

'The true end of every great and free people should be self-respect- 
ing peace; and this nation most earnestly desires sincere and cordial 
friendship wath all others. Over the entire world, of recent years. 




BOOKER T. WASHINGTON, A. M., LL- D., PRESIDKNT OF THK 
TUSKEGEB NORMAI, INSTITUTE 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



455 



wars between the great civilized Powers have become less and less 
frequent. Wars with barbarous or semi-barbarous peoples come in 
an entirely different category, being merely a most regrettable but 
necessary international police duty which must be performed for the 
sake of the welfare of mankind. Peace can only be kept with cer- 
tainty where both sides wish to keep it; but more and more the civil- 
ized peoples are realizing the wicked folly of war and are attaining 
that condition of just and intelligent regard for the rights of others 
which will in the end, as we hope and believe, make world-wide peace 
possible. The peace conference at The Hague gave definite expres- 
sion to this hope and belief and marked a stride toward their attain- 
ment. 

'This same peace conference acquiesced in our statement of the 
Monroe Doctrine as compatible with the purposes and aims of the 
conference. The Monroe Doctrine should be the cardinal feature of 
the foreign policy of all the nations of the two Americas, as it is of 
the United States. Just seventy-eight years have passed since Presi- 
dent Monroe in his annual message announced that 'The American 
Continents are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future 
colonization by any European Power." In other words, the Monroe 
Doctrine is a declaration that there must be no territorial aggrandize- 
ment by any non-American Power at the expense of any American 
Power on American soil. It is in no wise intended as hostile to any 
nation in the Old World. Still less is it intended to give cover to any 
aggression by one New World Power at the expense of any other. 
It is simply a step, and a long step, toward assuring the universal 
peace of the world by securing the possibility of permanent peace on 
this hemisphere. 

''During the past century other influences have established the per- 
manence and independence of the smaller States of Europe. Tlirough 



466 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 



the Monroe Doctrine we hope to be able to safeguard like independ- 
ence and secure like permanence for the lesser among the New 
W orld nations. 

'This doctrine has nothing to do with the commercial relations 
of any American power, save that it in truth allows each of them to 
form such as it desires. In other words, it is really a guaranty of the 
commercial independence of the Americas. We do not ask under this 
doctrine for any exclusive commercial dealings with any other Ameri- 
can State. We do not guarantee any State against punishment if it 
misconducts itself, provided that punishment does not take the form 
of the acquisition of territory by any non-Am.erican power. 

''Our attitude in Cuba is a sufficient guaranty of our own good 
faith. We have not the slightest desire to secure any territory at the 
expense of any of our neighbors. We wish to work with them hand 
in hand, so that all of us may be uplifted together, and we rejoice over 
the good fortune of any of them, we gladly hail their material pros- 
perity and political stability, and are concerned and alarmed if any of 
them fall into industrial or political chaos. We do not wish to see any 
Old AA^orld military^ power grow up on this continent, or to be com- 
pelled to become a military power ourselves. The peoples of the 
Americas can prosper best if left to work out their own salvation in 
their own way." 

The country needs a strong Navy to keep pace with the nation's 
growing interests. We must prepare for war in times of peace ; thus 
more ships and more men are needed. Constant gun-practice is 
recommended, and we should have a strong National Naval Reserve. 
As to the Army, that should be of the best, though "it is not neces- 
sar}^ to increase our Army beyond its present size; but it is necessary 
to keep it at . the highest point of efficiency. The individual units 
who as officers and enlisted men compose the airniy, are, we have good 
reason to believe, at least as efficient as those of any other army in the 
entire world. It is our duty to see that their training is of a kind to 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



457 



insure the highest possible expression of power to these units when 
• acting in combination. 

'The conditions of modern war are such as to make an infinitely 
heavier demand than ever before upon the individual character and 
capacity of the ofiicer and the enlisted man, and to make it far more 
difficult for men to act together with effect. At present the fighting 
must be done in extended order, which means that each man must 
act for himself and at the same time act in combination with others 
with whom he is no longer in the old-fashioned elbow-to-elbow touch. 
Under such conditions a few men of the highest excellence are worth 
more than many men without the special skill which is only found as 
the result of special training applied to men of exceptional physique 
and morale. But nowadays the most valuable fighting man and the 
most difficult to perfect is the rifleman who is also a skillful and daring 
rider. * * * 

''Every promotion and every detail under the War Department 
must be made solely with regard to the good of the service and to the 
capacity and merit of the man himself. No pressure, political, social, 
or personal, of any kind, will be permitted to exercise the least effect 
in any question of promotion or detail; and if there is reason to believe 
that such pressure is exercised at the instigation of the officer con- 
cerned, it will be held to militate against him. In our army we can- 
not afford to have rewards or duties distributed save on the simple 
ground that those who by their own merits are entitled to the rewards 
get them, and that those who are peculiarly fit to do the duties are 
chosen to perform them. 

"Every effort should be made to bring the army to a constantly in- 
creasing state of efficiency. When on actual service no work save 
that directly in the line of such service should be required. The 
paper work in the army, as in the navy, should be greatly reduced. 
What is needed is proved power of command and capacity tO' work 



458 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



well in the field. Constant care is necessary to prevent dry rot in 
the transportation and commissary departments. 

''Our army is so small and so much scattered that is it very dif¥cult 
to give the higher officers (as well as the lower officers and the en~ 
listed men) a chance to practise manoeuvres in mass and on a com- 
paratively large scale. In time of need no amount of individual ex- 
cellence would avail against the paralysis which would follow inability 
to work as a coherent while under skillful and daring leadership. 
The Congress should provide means whereby it will be possible tO' 
have field exercises by at least a division of regulars, and if possible 
also a division of National Guardsmen, once a year. These exercises 
might take the form of field manoeuvres; or, if on the Gulf Coast or 
the Pacific or Atlantic Seaboard, or in the region of the Great Lakes, 
the army corps when assembled could be marched from some inland 
point to some point on the water, there embarked, disembarked after 
a couple of days'journey at some other point, and again marched in- 
land. Only by actual handling and providing for men in masses while 
they are marching, camping, embarking, and disembarking, will it 
be possible to train the higher officers to perform their duties well and 
smoothly. 

"A great debt is owing from the public to the men of the army and 
navy. They should be so treated as to enable them to reach the 
highest point of efficiency, so that they may be able to respond in- 
stantly to any demand made upon them to sustain the interests of 
the nation and the honor of the flag. The individual American 
enlisted man is probably on the whole a more formidable fighting man 
than the regular of any other army. Every consideration should be 
shown him, and in return the highest standard of usefulness should be 
exacted from him. It is well wwth while for the Congress to con- 
sider whether the pay of enlisted men upon second and subsequent 
enlistments should not be increased to correspond with the increased 
value of the veteran soldier. 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 459 

"Much good has already come from the Act reorganizing the 
army, passed early in the present year. The three prime reforms, 
all of them of literally inestimable value, are, first, the substitution of 
four-year details from the line for permanent appointments in the so- 
called stafif divisions; second, the establishment of a corps of artillery 
with a chief at the head; third, the establishment of a maximum and 
minimum limit for the army. It would be difficult to overestimate the 
improvement in the efficiency of our army which these three reforms 
are making, and have in part already effected." 

The merit system is one of reform: 

"The merit system of making appointments is in its essence as 
democratic and American as the common school system itself. It 
simply means that in clerical and other positions where the duties are 
entirely non-political all applicants should have a fair field and no 
favor, each standing on his merits as he is able to show them by prac- 
tical test. Written competitive examinations offer the only available 
means in many cases for applying this system. In other cases, as 
where laborers are employed, a system of registration undoubtedly 
can be widely extended. There are, of course, places where the 
written competitive examination cannot be applied, and others where 
it offers by no means an ideal solution, but where under existing 
political conditions it is, though an imperfect means, yet the best 
present means of getting satisfactory results. * >k * 

"It is important to have this system obtain at home, but it is even 
more important to have it applied rigidly in our insular possessions. 
Not an office should be filled in the Philippines or Porto Rico with 
any regard to the man's partisan affiliations or services, with any 
regard to the political, social, or personal influence which he may 
have at his command; in short, heed should be paid tO' absolutely 
nothing save the man's own character and capacity and the needs of 
the service. 



460 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



"The administration of these islands should be as wholly free from 
the suspicion of partisan politics as the administration of the Army 
and Navy. All that we ask from the public servant in the Philippines 
or Porto Rico is that he reflect honor on his countr}' by the way in 
which he makes that country's rule a benefit to the peoples who have 
come under it. This is all that we should ask, and we cannot afford 
to be content with less. 

'The merit system is simply one method of securing honest and 
efficient administration of the Government; aiid in the long run the 
sole justification of any type of government lies in its proving itself 
both honest and efiicient." 

In the Consular Service laws are needed to m.aintain a standard 
of excellence. Referring to the Indian tribes, the ]\Iessage declares 
they must go, but ''the Indian should be treated as an individual, like 
the white man. During the change of treatment inevitable hardships 
will occur; eyery effort should be made to minimize these hardships, 
but we should not because of them hesitate to make the change. 
There should be a continuous reduction in the number of agencies. 

'Tn dealing with the aboriginal races few things are more im- 
portant than to preserve them from the terrible physical and moral 
degration resulting from the Hquor traffic. We are doing ah we can 
to save our own Indian tribes from this evil. Wherever by interna- 
tional agreement this same end can be attained as regards races where 
we do not possess exclusive control, every effort should be made to 
bring it about." 

The people are urged to aid the various Expo-sitions in the different 
cities and states. 

The Postal Service should be extended in rural deliveries, and 
second-class mail abuses abolished. 

"Owing to the rapid growth of our power and our interests on the 
Pacific, whatever happens in China must be of the keenest national 
concern to us. 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



461 



''The general terms of the settlement of the questions growing out 
of the anti-foreign uprisings in China of 1900, having been formulated 
in a joint note addressed to China by the representatives of the in- 
jured Powers in December last, were promptly accepted by the 
Chinese Government. After protracted conferences the Plenipotenti- 
aries of the several Powers w^ere able tO' sign a final protocol with the 
Chinese Plenipotentiaries on the 7th of last September, setting forth 
the measures taken by China in compliance with the demands of the 
joint note, and expressing their satisfaction therewith. It will be 
laid before the Congress, with a report of the Plenipotentiary on 
behalf of the United States, Mr. William Woodville Rockhill, to 
whom high praise is due for the tact, good judgment, and energy he 
has displayed in performing an exceptionally difficult and delicate 
task. 

"The agreement reached disposes in a manner satisfactory to the 
Powers of the various grounds of complaint, and will contribute 
materially to better future relations between China and the Pow^ers. 
Reparation has been made by China for the murder of foreigners 
during the uprising, and punishment has been inflicted on the officials, 
however high in rank, recognized as responsible for or having partici- 
pated in the outbreak. Official examinations have been forbidden for 
a period of five years in all cities in which foreigners have been mur- 
dered or cruell}^ treated, and edicts have been issued making all 
officials directly responsible for the future safety of foreigners and for 
the suppression of violence against them. 

"Provisions have been made for insuring the future safety of the 
foreign representatives in Pekin by setting aside for their exclusive 
use a quarter of the city which the Powers can make defensible and 
in which they can if necessary maintain permanent military guards; 
by dismantling the military works between the capital and the sea; 
and by allowing the temporary maintenance of foreign military posts 
along this line. An edict has been issued by the Emperor, of China 



462 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



prohibiting for two years the importation of arms and ammunition 
into China. China has agreed to pay adequate indemnities to the 
States, societies, and individuals for the losses sustained by them and 
for the expenses of the military expeditions sent by the various 
Powers to pro'tect life and restore order. 

"Under the provisions of the joint note of December, 1900, China 
has agreed to revise the treaties of commerce and navigation and to 
take such other steps for the purpose of facilitating trade as the 
foreign powers m.ay decide to be needed. 

'The Chinese Government has agreed to participate financially in 
the work of bettering the water approaches to Shanghai and to 
Tienstin, the centers of foreign trade in Central and Northern China, 
and an International Conservancy Board, in which the Chinese 
Government is largely represented, has been provided for the im- 
provement of the Shanghai River and the control of its navigation. 
In the same line of commercial advantages a revision of the present 
tariff on imports has been assented to for the purpose of substituting 
specific for ad valorem duties, and an expert has been sent abroad 
on the part of the United States to assist in this work. A hst of 
articles to remain free of duty, including flour, cereals, and rice, gold 
and silver coin and bullion, has also been agreed upon in the settle- 
ment. 

"During these troubles our Government has unswervingly advo- 
cated moderation, and has materially aided in bringing about an ad- 
justment which tends to enhance the welfare of China and to lead to 
a more beneficial intercourse between the Empire and the modern 
world; w^hile in the critical period of revolt and massacre w^e did our 
full share in safeguarding life and property, restoring order, and 
vindicating the national interest and honor. It behooves us to con- 
tinue in these paths, doing what lies in O'ur power to foster feelings of 
good will, and leaving no effort untried to work out the great polic}^ 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



463 



of full and fair intercourse between China and the nations, on a foot- 
ing of equal rights and advantage to all. We advocate the "open 
door" with all that it implies; not merely the procurement of enlarged 
commercial opportunities on the coasts, but access to the interior by 
the waterways with which China has been so extraordinarily favored. 
Only by bringing the people of China into peaceful and friendly com- 
munity of trade with all the peoples of the earth can the work now 
auspiciously begun be carried to fruition. In the attainment of this 
purpose we necessarily claim parity of treatment, under the con- 
ventions, throughout the Empire for our trade and our citizens with 
those of all other Powers." 

The Message, which was of extraordinary length, was a fine effort, 
such as a cultivated scholar and statesman might put forth. The 
temptation is great to quote it fully, for every line of it is well thought 
out and felicitously expressed. Let the closing paragraph of a 
writing which is academic and with little in it tO' cause the accusation 
of "impetuous" so often applied to the wTiter of it in former times, 
serve as an illustration: 

"The death of Queen Victoria caused the people of the United 
States deep and heartfelt sorrow, to w^hich the Government gave full 
expression. When President McKinley died, our nation in turn, 
received from every quarter of the British Empire expressions of grief 
and sympathy no less sincere. The death of the Empress Dowager 
Frederick of Germany also aroused the genuine sympathy of the 
American people; and this sympathy was cordially reciprocated by 
Germany when the President was assassinated. Indeed, from every 
quarter of the civilized world we received, at the time of the Presi- 
dent's death, assurances of such grief and regard as to touch the 
hearts of our people. In the midst of our affliction we reverently 
thank the Almighty that we are at peace wdth the nations of mankind; 
and we firmly intend that our policy shall be such as to continue un- 
broken these international relations of mutual respect and good 
will. "THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

"White House, December 3, 1901." 



464 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT 



The message was different from what had been expected. It was 
conservative, non-assertive, indeed it rather recommended measures 
than dictated them. Those citizens who had supposed that the m_an- 
ner of \1t. Roosevelt pre-supposed that his first message from the 
Presidential chair would assert his well-known position as an un- 
compromising reformer vere doomed to disappointment. While 
the voluminous writing spelled reform in every line of it, yet it 
equally demonstrated the fact that the President recommended the 
reform measure where he deemed it necessary, and that the fact 
must come from those to whom was allotted the power to treat with 
the measure and to take part in the responsibility. 

The message is a formidable state document, but it is readable 
throughout. President Roosevelt has a very good style of writing, 
forceful and trenchant, and his message is made long, not because 
of garrulousness but because he has so many subjects of importance 
to discuss. The message is thoroughly Am.erican. It departs alto- 
gether from the stereotyped form, and one looks in vain for the 
ordinary arrangement of topics. 

r'or years the Presidents of the United States have followed a 
general introduction with comments upon the reports of their Secre- 
taries. They usually began with the report of the Secretary of State, 
and a considerable portion of each message was taken up with for- 
eign relations, some of them unimportant. President Roosevelt, on 
the other hand, gives first and almost undivided attention to home 
affairs. Foreign relations occupy only about three pages of the 
message, and two-thirds of this space is devoted to affairs in China. 
This is as it should be. The message of the President is a report on 
the state of the Union. There is no need to inject into such a report 
trivial details respecting the operation of Departments whose reports 
are also submitted to Congress. President Roosevelt has adopted 
the more sensible course of writing a series of essays giving his views 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



465 



on important topics. x\s this is his first message he has been im- 
pelled to begin at the beginning of each topic, and his message is, 
therefore, long, but the style is really condensed, and we may expect 
that hereafter his messages to Congress will be shorter. 

In reviewing the message, which will furnish m.aterial for comment 
for the next twelvemonth, one cannot do better than to describe it, 
leaving the reader to study it in detail, or such parts of it as may in- 
terest him. Every American, however, ought to read it from begin- 
ning to end. If it cannot be mastered in one sitting, then it should 
be read like a continued story. It is as easy to read as a magazine 
article on any particular topic, and it contains many passages that 
ought to be preserved in the miinds of men. 

The message opens with an admirable article on the assassination 
of President McKinley, ending with suggestions relating to the sup- 
pression of Anarchists. Mention of the prosperity of the co'untry 
is followed by a philosophical discussion of the problem of trusts and 
labor organizations. The remedy for the abuses of trusts, in the 
opinion of the President, is publicity. He points out that we ac- 
cept as a m.atter of course inspection of national banks and the publi- 
cation of exact informatio'U regarding their standing, and he urges 
that great corporations engaged in interstate business should also 
be put under inspection and their doings reported. The first 
requisite to regulation is knowledge, full and complete — knowledge 
which may be made public to the world. The President is so strenu- 
ous on this point that he suggests a constitutional' amendment, in 
case Congress should find itself unauthorized to deal with the 
matter. 

He forcefully recommends the creation of a Cabinet officer, to be 
known as Secretary of Commerce and Industries, and in this con- 
nection discusses labor problems. Pie wants the National Govern- 
ment to maintain a high standard of wages, promote the enforce- 
ment of the Eight Hour law, forbid night work for women and chil- 



466 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



clren, and provide in its contracts that all work should be done under 
'"fair" conditions. Re proposes also that a factory law shall be 
passed for the District of Columbia, and that the inhabitated alleys 
of AVashington shall be turned into minor streets, where people 
can live under conditions favorable to health and m.orals. He en- 
dorses trades unions when managed with forethought, and when 
they combine insistence upon their own rights with law-abiding 
respect for the rights of others. He urges amendment to the im- 
migration laws, so as to exclude Anarchists and those of Anarchistic 
proclivities, and the application of an educational test, with a view 
to admitting those only who have some intelligent capacity to 
appreciate American institutions and act sanely as American citizens. 
"There should be proper proof of personal capacity to earn an Ameri- 
can living, and enough money to insure a decent start under Ameri- 
can conditions." He recommends the immediate reenactment of the 
law excluding Chinese laborers, and that it be strengthened wher- 
ever necessar}^ in order to make its enforcement entirely effective. 

The President endorses our present tariff system, deprecates gen- 
eral tariff changes, but declares that "reciprocity must be treated as 
the liandmaiden of protection." He adds: 

"The natural line of development for a policy of reciprocity will 
be in connection with those of our productions Avhich no longer re- 
quire all of the support once needed to establish them upon a sound 
basis, and with those others where, either because of natural or of 
economic causes, Ave are beyond the reach of successful competition." 

The only indefinite paragraph of the message relates to an im- 
provement of the American merchant marine. The President- 
clearly points out the need for an increase of American shipping, 
but avoids endorsement of the subsidy scheme, saying simply: 

"Our Government should take such action as will remedy these 
inequalities. The American merchant marine should be restored to 
the ocean." 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



467 



It is to be inferred from the teno-r of the message that if a subsidy 
bill should be passed it would be approved, but that the President 
will not go out of his way to promote its passage. 

A brief paragraph referring Congress to the report of the Secre- 
tary of the Treasury disposes of the financial question, the only 
recommendation being that Congress shall exercise strict economy 
in expenditures. He recommends amendm.ent of the Interstate Com- 
merce act, to the end that its general purpose may be attained, but 
offers no specific suggestion. 

In connection with the report of the Department of Agriculture, 
the President presents a strong argument in favor of forest reserves 
and the construction by the National Government of reservoirs for 
the irrigation of arid lands. 

Of our island possessions the President recommends the applica- 
tion of O'ur homestead laws to Hawaii and Porto Rico, and extends 
heartiest greetings and good wishes to Cuba, about to become her 
own mistress. For the Philippines he recommends legislation by 
which the resources of the islands may be developed. Franchises 
must be granted and business permitted only under regulations which 
will guarantee the islands against any kind of improper exploitation. 
He recommends the immediate construction of a cable to Hawaii 
and the Philippines, and eventually to Asia, either by the Govern- 
ment or a private cable company, under contract with the Gov- 
ernment. He also strongly recommends the construction of an 
isthmian canal, and announces that under the new treaty with Great 
Britain to be submitted to the Senate the United States alone is to 
do the work of building, assume the responsibility of safeguarding 
the canal, and regulate its neutral use by all nations on terms of 
equality, without the guarantee or interference of any outside nation 
from any quarter. 

He recommends a great strengthening of our naval force. 



468 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



"The American people must either build and maintain an adequate 
navy, or else make up their minds definitely to accept a secondary 
position in international affairs, not merely in political, but in com- 
mercial matters. It has been well said that there is no surer Avay 
of courting national disaster than to be 'opulent, aggressive and un- 
armed.' " 

The army is discussed at great length. The President says it is 
unnecessary to increase its present size at this time, but he presents 
many recommendations for an increase of its efficiency, and closes 
this section of his message by a fine tribute to the volunteer soldiers 
who fought in the War of the Rebellion and in the war v^-ith Spain. 

Civil Service reform has never received more emphatic endorse- 
ment than from President Roosevelt. He begins by declaring that 
"the merit system of making appointments is, in its essence, as demo- 
cratic and American as the common school system itself." He 
rec'.)mm.ends an extension of the law, and especially a strict appli- 
cation of it in our insular possessions. He also endorses projects 
for the improvement of our Consular Service by the application of 
civil service reform principles. He says the time has arrived to treat 
the Indians as individuals, breaking up their tribal relations. 

Cordial support is asked for the St. Louis and Charleston Expo- 
sitions; there is a kindly word for the Pan-American Exposition, 
for the Smithsonian Institution and the Congressional Library. The 
President recommends that the Census Office be made a permanent 
Government Bureau, and that the Postofiice Department be sus- 
tained in its effort to correct the abuses connected with the trans- 
mission of second class mail matter, which comprises three-fifths of 
the weight of all mail matter, and produces only $4,294,445 out of 
the aggregate postal receipts of $111,631,193. 

The concluding passages of the message relate to the Chinese 
imbroglio and the Pan-American Congress, now in session in the 
City of Mexico, and it ends as follows: 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



469 



The death of Queen Victoria caused the people of the United 
States deep and heartfelt sorrow, to which the Government gave 
full expression. When President McKinley died our nation, in 
turn, received from every quarter of the British Empire expressions 
of grief and sympathy no less sincere. The death of the Empress 
Dowager Frederick of Germany also aroused the genuine sympathy 
of the American people, and this sympathy was cordially reciprocated 
by Germany when the President was assassinated. Indeed, from 
every quarter of the civilized w^orld w^e received at the time of the 
President's death assurance of such grief and regard as to touch the 
hearts of our people. In the midst of our affliction we reverently 
thank the Almighty God that we are at peace with the nations of 
mankind, and we firmly intend that our policy shall be such as to 
continue unbroken these international relations of mutual respect 
and good-will." 

Altogether, the message is the most readable and interesting state 
paper of recent years, and it deals with questions of the first im- 
portance in a perfectly frank and generally decided manner. 

This is the review of the message given in one of the most con- 
servative journals of the country, and the reviews of other journals 
are largely in accord with it. 

In Washington the message was regarded by diplomats as making 
arl important change in the meaning of the Monroe Doctrine. 

President Roosevelt's remarks on the Monroe Doctrine in his 
message to Congress are regarded here as an announcement that 
the Monroe Doctrine will hereafter be interpreted as discouraging 
and disfavoring territorial aggrandizement by one Republic at the 
expense of another. 

This interpretation has aroused much interest among public men 
and diplomats, and efforts have been made to ascertain just what the 
President did mean by his declaration. The language of the message 
on this point is: • 



470 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



"In Other words the Monroe Doctrine is a declaration that there 
must be no territorial aggrandizement by any non-American Power 
at the expense of any American Power on American soil. It is in 
no wise intended as hostile to any nation in the Old Vv'orld. Still 
less is it intended to give cover to any aggression by one New World 
Power at the expense of any other. It is simply a step, and a long 
step, toward assuring the universal peace of the world by securing 
the possibility of permanent peace on this hemisphere. During the 
last century O'ther influences have established the permanency and in- 
dependence of the smaller states of Europe. Through the Monroe 
Doctrine w^e hope to be able to safeguard Hke independence and se- 
cure like permanence for the lesser among the New World nations." 

A member of the Cabinet said this afternoon that the President's 
declaration was simply a reiteration of views hitherto held by him 
and many other public men. 

"Jt is not," said the Cabinet officer, "a declaration on the part of 
the President that the United States will not permit any aggression 
by any one American Power upon the territory of another. It is a 
declaration that this Government would regard with great concern 
and great disfavor any conquest of an American Power by another 
Arrerican Power. It does not mean that the United States will 
form an alliance with a weaker Power to prevent its conquest by a 
stronger one." 

Senator Lodge, member of the Senate Foreign Relations Com- 
mittee, who listened to this statement, approved the interpretation 
given, adding: "The declaration simply repeats the traditional and 
uniform policy of this country. It is not a new departure." 

Nevertheless, an examination of the former President's messages 
shows no such interpretation as given by President Roosevelt. These 
positions have hitherto been taken with respect to the Alonroe Doc- 
trine. 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 471 

The declarations upon which Mr. Monroe consulted Mr. Jefferson 
and his Cabinet related to the interposition of European Powers in 
the affairs of American States. 

The kind of interposition declared against was that which may 
be made for the purpose of controlling their political affairs or of 
extending to this hemisphere the system in operation upon the Con- 
tinent of Europe by which the great Powers exercise a control over 
the affairs of other European States. 

The declarations do not intimate any course of conduct to be pur- 
sued in case of such interpositions, but mierely say they would be 
considered as dangerous to our peace and safety, and as the "mani- 
festation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States," 
which it would be impossible for us to ''behold with indifference,'' 
thus leaving the nation to act at all times as its opinion of its policy 
or duty might require. 

The United States has never made any alliance with or pledge to 
any other American State on the subject covered by the declarations. 

The declaration respecting non-colonization was on a subject dis- 
tinct from European intervention with American vStates, and related 
to the acquisition of sovereign title by any European Power by new 
and original occupation or colonization thereafter. Whatever were 
the political motives for resisting such colonization, the principle of 
public law^ upon which it was placed was that the continent must 
be considered as already within the occupation and jurisdiction of 
independent civilized nations. 

There is nothing in the message of President Monroe which refers 
in any way to the relations of the Spanish American States or to the 
imposition of any prohibition upon them to extend their respective 
territories. President AJonroe asserted that ''it is still the true policy 
of the United States to leave the parties (Spam and the South Ameri- 
can States) to themselves, in the hope that the other Powers will 
pursue the same course." 



in ^ THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

President Grant, in his second annual message, paved the way for 
President Roosevelt's utterance by declaring that ''the allied and 
other republics of Spanish origin on this continent may see in this 
fact a nevv proof of our sincere interest in their welfare, of our desire 
to see them blessed with good governments, capable of maintaining 
order and of preserving their respective territorial integrity." 

In a report to President Grant, Secretary Fish called attention to 
treaties negotiated with New Granada (Colombia) by which the 
United States guaranteed her sovereignty over the Isthmus of 
Panama, and wath Nicaragua and Honduras the United States 
guaranteed the neutrality of the route of communication across their 
territory. These treaties were made for a specific purpose and con- 
stituted a true protective alliance between the United States and 
each of these Republics. Nevertheless they are believed to form, 
with President Grant's declaration, the base upon which Mr. 'Roose- 
velt built his new doctrine. 

In Pan-.\mcncan diplomatic circles great importance is attached 
to Mr. Roosevelt's declaration. One diplomat stated that it meant 
nothing less than an announcement of the purpose of the Washing- 
ton government to direct the foreign policies of American Republics. 

'The Moairoe Doctrine," he said, defined the foreign policies of 
American Pepublics with respect to Europe. The new doctrine 
promulgated by Mr. Roosevelt tells us that we will not be allowed 
to take the fruits of war provided they be in the shape of territory. 
If Brazil and Argentina were to become involved in war under Mr. 
Roosevelt's policy the conqueror would not be allowed to perma- 
nently occupy the territory of the conquered. 

'Tn the case of Chili this is particularly unjust. She is progressive 
and industrious. Her country is now too small for her population, 
and expansion is necessary if she is to become a great power. Presi- 
dent Roosevelt, however, steps in and says she camnot acquire addi- 
tional territory. Does his doctrine apply to the Tacna-Arica dispute? 



t'ATRIOT AND STATESMAl^. 



478 



Is Chili to be compelled to surrender the provinces which she has 
held as compensation for her expenses during the war with Peru? 

"Carrying- out the policy of j\Ir. Roosevelt, in case Costa Rica and 
Colombia become involved in war, an appeal from Costa Rica will 
result in the interference of the United States, because of Mr. Roose- 
velt's purpose to secure permanence for the lesser among the New 
World nations." 

Senor Silva, Colombian Minister, said Mr. Roosevelt's declaration 
was certainly a new interpretation of the Monroe doctrine. 

"The idea Mr. Roosevelt probably had in mind," he continued, 
was to disarm the suspicion unhappily harbored by some South 
Americans that the United States still contemplates expansion at the 
expense of the South American Republics. He undoubtedly de- 
signed to tighten the bonds existing between Pan-American na- 
tions, and to this end he gave utterances to statements certain to 
inspire confidence and trust in the country which has always been 
our best friend. 

*'Mr. Roosevelt's declaration is new and it is important, but I am 
unable to state what its effect will be." 

We give here the original Monroe Doctrine and President Roose- 
velt's interpretation of it: 

"The American continents * ^re henceforth not to 

be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European 
Powers. * * It is impossible that the allied Powers should 
extend their political system to any portion of either continent with- 
out endangering our peace and happiness, nor can any one believe 
that our Southern brethren, if left to themselves, would adopt it of 
their own accord. It is equally impossible, therefore, that we should 
behold such mterposition in any form without interference." — Presi- 
dent Monroe's Original Message, December 2, 1823. 

"The Monroe Doctrine is a declaration that there must be no ter- 
ritorial aggrandizement by any non-American Power at the expense 



474 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



of any American Power on American soil. It is in no wise intended 
as hostile to any nation in the Old World. Still less is it intended to 
give cover to any aggression by one New World Power at the ex- 
pense of any other. It is simply a step, and a long step, toward as- 
suring the universal peace of the world by securing the possibility 
of permanent peace on this hemisphere. During the last century 
other influences have established the permanence and independence 
of the smaller States of Europe. Through the Monroe Doctrine we 
hope to be able to safeguard like independence and secure like per- 
manence for the lesser among the New World nations." — President 
Roosevelt's interpretation of Doctrine, December 3, 1901. 

Anarchy was the flrst subject taken up by the Senators Decem- 
ber 5th. 

Senator McComas, of Maryland, made an extended and carefully 
prepared speech in the Senate to-day with anarchy for his theme, and 
was followed by some brief remarks by Mr. Hoar, of Massachusetts, on 
the difficulties in the way of dealing with Anarchist assassins. Mr. Mc- 
Comas' remarks showed careful examination of the legal authorities. 
Fie maintained that Congress had full power under the constitution 
to enact a law punishable with death any person killing a President, 
or assaulting the President with intent to kill, or aiding or inciting 
or procuring such an act. He favored rigid provisions in the immi- 
gration laws for the deportation of alien Anarchists. Much of the 
speech was devoted to an explanation of the dangerous doctrines of 
anarchy and the extent to which these doctrines had been propagated 
within recent years. 

Senator Hoar's remarks were interesting as coming from the ven- 
erable chairman of the Judiciary Committee, which will have much 
to do with the framing of any legislation on this subject. 

Mr. Penrose favorably reported from the Committee on Education 
and Labor the bill continuing- the industrial commission until Feb- 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



475 



ruary 15 in order that it may close up now work in hand, and secured 
immediate consideration for the measure. The bill was passed. 

Mr. McComas, of Maryland, was recognized for an extended and 
carefully prepared speech on anarchy and the methods of dealing with 
it. He said in part: 

"Within seven years President Carnot, Prime Minister Canovas 
del Castillo, the Empress of Austria, King Humbert and President 
McKinley have been foully assassinated by Anarchists. Our homes 
are still under the shadow of national grief for our best beloved Presi- 
dent, and the heart of the world is with us in o>ur sorrow. It is hu- 
miliating to consider hovv^ impotent are our Federal laws to punish 
this fearful crime. These tragic assassinations in five countries widely 
separate in so short a time show that this hideous crime of anarchy 
is increasing. To abnormal minds possessed with this impulse to 
homicide, envy and vanity give a peculiar fascination to the idea of 
assassinating a King or President. 

"Congress must legislate against this new peril with courage, with 
firmness, but also with conservatism and prudence. The Constitu- 
tion permits Congress to enact a law to punish such crimes against 
the very existence of the government the Constitution ordained." 

After defining the terms of a prepared statute fixing the death 
penalty for killing a President, or assaulting him with intent to kill, 
or advising, inciting or procuring such acts, the Senator proceeded 
as follows: 

"This sovereign nation is not so weak that it must depend upon 
the varying laws of its difi'erent States to punish a criminal who as- 
sassinates or attempts to assassinate the President whom the Con- 
stitution declares 'shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.' 

"The President is within this peace of the United States. A per- 
son assailing the President while in the discharge of his duties vio- 
lates this peace. If the President is receiving the people of our coun- 
try or representatives of foreign countries in any city of any of our 



476 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



States he is at the time within the peace of the United States. If 
after he performs such function he journeys to the AVhite House 
and at night when asleep the car wherein he sleeps be assailed with 
dynamite, such crime is still a crime against the peace of the United 
States in whatever State the President's train may be. Can this be 
do\ibted? The President's duty is continuous, not pretermittent. 
He is always on duty; he cannot delegate his highest functions. 
Until he dies or resigns or ends his term he is ever taking care that 
the law be faithfully executed. That the government may not be 
pretennit, from necessity the President is on duty always and every- 
where. The President is in the peace of the United States at all times 
and in all places in the Union. Congress may go further — it may 
enact laws to protect the high executive officers; it may even pro- 
tect Senators and members of Congress. I am convinced it is wise 
to legislate now to protect the head of the State — the President and 
the Vice President and the officers on whom the office of President 
shall devolve' — and now go no further. It may be prudent to declare 
that this statute is not to be construed to impair the protection 
already afforded by the lavv^ to other officials of the United States. 

"Congress should enact a law to give Federal courts jurisdiction 
to try and punish by imprisonment for a term of years two or more 
who confederate and conspire to murder the President or Vice 
President, or both, or any of the officers in line of succession to the 
President, or who advise or incite any person to overthrow the Fed- 
eral Government or destroy it by force and violence by wilfully 
killing or assaulting with intent to kill the President or Vice Presi- 
dent, or both, or any of the officers in line of succession to the Presi- 
dent. 

"This statute should make it a crime with penalty of imprison- 
ment for a term of years for any person to knowingly become or 
continue to be a member of any association, club or assembly where 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



477 



any person or persons advise or incite any of the of¥enses before 
mentioned. 

"Such statute should make it a crime punishable by imprisonment 
for a term of years for any person or persons to threaten or to speak, 
write, print or publish any works or declarations counseling, advising 
or inciting other persons to wilfully kill or to assault with intent to 
kill the President. The prohibitions, crimes and penalties of the 
postal laws to suppress fraudulent and lottery schemics should be ex- 
tended to include the sending through the mails written or printed 
Anarchist documents or newspaper counseling or advising the crimes 
in this statute mentioned, or counseling or advising the subversion 
or destruction by force and violence of the Government of the United 
States. 

"But this statute would be incomplete unless it included one other 
feature. It should make it a crime punishable with a term of impris- 
onment for two or more while in the United States to conspire and 
confederate to commit any one of the crimes mentioned upon any 
President, King or other head of a State, of any repubhc, kingdom 
or empire, or other sovereign state, or for any person to solicit, per- 
suade, or propose to any other person to murder the head of a state 
of any republic, kingdom, empire, or other sovereign state. Inter- 
national comity requires this. No Oiue doubts that a conspiracy in 
one nation to kill the head of another state is an offense against the 
law of nations. 

"We should enact laws to expel and to exclude alien Anarchists. 
.We shall at this session with unanimity re-enact the Chinese exclu- 
sion acts. I will cheerfully vote to exclude the hordes of China and 
prevent the competition of Chinese cheap labor. Far more readily 
will I vote to exclude alien Anarchists here now. We have natural- 
ized and even native Anarchists in our midst. With these we must 
contend in other fashion. Why should we not, as we may, expel 
alien Anarchists for cause?" 



478 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



The Senator also urged numerous amendments of the immigra- 
tion laws with a view to excluding Anarchists. In conclusion he 
said : 

"At all times the body of the plain people whom Lincoln loved 
and upon whom McKinley leaned, are its unfailing defenders. This 
great people, facing the hideous peril of anarchism, taught by their 
sorrow to think straight and see clear, now rate more highly than 
ever the value of their Government, prize more than ever its bene- 
fits which are theirs to enjoy and theirs to transmit. More than ever 
before are now revealed to them its blessings, its glory and its 
power." 

At the conclusion of Mr. McComas' remarks, Mr. Hoar, of Mas- 
sachusetts, spoke briefly along the same lines. He said that while 
he heartily agreed with much that had been said, yet the great 
difhculty in all these cases of assassination was that the assassin was 
willing and anxious to give up his life. Fear of consequences did 
not in any way deter such an assassin. Such was the case with the 
assassin of William of Orange, who welcomed the torture inflicted 
upon him. Every assassin of a foreign ruler had expected early and 
certain deadi. The multiplication of punishments for the act itself, 
therefore, would accomplish little. Much good might be accom- 
plished in limiting the circulation of fanatical doctrines. 

But the Senator believed that a much more effective remedy could 
be secured if by common consent of all civilized nations some tract 
of land somewhere on the earth's surface, hemmed in from the outer 
world, could be set aside for the confinement of those who counseled 
the killing of rulers or the overthrow of governments. 

''Let the Anarchists have an object lesson," the Senator said, *'and 
let the world have an ol.^ject lesson. Let there be a little inocula- 
tion of anarchy intc tlie Anarchist himself, and let him have an an- 
archistic government among his fellows." 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



479 



Mr. Hoar said banishment would be a proper punishment under 
the Constitution, and if all nations would agree that every such per- 
son be sent to a spot where there was no government, it would be 
an effective remedy. Certainly the Anarchist could not complain, 
for in being transported to a place of no government he would have' 
reached his Utopia 

Perhaps outside of ''Anarchy" the subject most engaging the pub- 
lic attention w^as the Panama Canal, says a great journal. 

"Any one who suggests a doubt of the superiority of the compli- 
cated Nicaragua route for a ship canal over the shorter and simpler 
route by the Isthmus of Panama, makes himself liable to denuncia- 
tion as an obstructionist, and probably an emissary of the Panama 
lobby or the Pacific Pail way lobby or some other power of dark- 
ness. Nevertheless, to the superficially informed — and this includes 
almost everybody — the presumption in favor of the shorter course, 
upon which a great amount of work has already been do-ne, remains 
so strong that the halting and half-hearted preference of the Panama 
Commission for the Nicaragua route has failed to carry conviction. 

'The determining consideration with the Commission appears to 
be "the terms ofi'ered" by the Panama Company for the purchase 
of its uncompleted works. The Panama canal was undertaken as a 
commercial enterprise and proved disastrous. There is some doubt 
whether any ship canal will pay as an investment, but it is quite cer- 
tain that there will never be business enough for two. A canal built 
and operated by the Covernment of the United States would not be 
expected to make dividends, and any competition must be hopeless. 
It is natural that the Panama people should wish to save v/hat they 
can out of the wreck. But- if they are in possession of the better 
route, it is questionable policy for this Government to put up with 
the second choice l;ecause of a difference of a few millions in some 
very large and very uncertain estimates. The canal is not for the 



480 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



present but for the future, and the cost of maintenance and opera- 
tion, and the tax that will be levied upon commerce, are much more 
important than the immediate cost. 

It has been observed that the members of the Canal Commission 
are not unanimous in their recommendation of the Nicaragua route, 
and the chief hydrographer of the Commission, 3vlr. Davis, who fur- 
nishes the most detailed scientific calculation accompanying the re- 
port, shows by figures which appear conclusive that the delay and 
cost of locking vessels through the Nicaragua canal would be almost 
prohibitory as compared with the Panama route. Against such ar- 
guments as these it does seem that the counter-arguments ought to 
be presented much more clearly than has been done in order to justify 
the confidence with which the Nicaragua route is so generally taken 
for granted." 

When it came to the ratihcation of the new canal treaty the most 
gratifying feature was the \irtual unanamity of the Senate. There 
were but six adverse votes — or eight, including pairs — and the oppo- 
sition to the treaty was in no respect important. 

There v.as no good reason why there should be any opposition 
whatever, since the treaty conceded everything for which the most 
ardent American had contended. It abrogated the Clayton-Bulwer 
treaty in set terms, and left the United States unhampered in the 
construction, maintenance and defense of a ship canal for the use of 
the commerce of the world. Some of the English papers persisted 
in lamenting this agreement as a pusillanimous surrender to the 
United States, but this view was quite as irrational as that of the 
Senators who thought the surrender not sufficiently abject. 

Neither country had ever professed any other purpose with regard 
to the canal than to facilitate its construction and secure its neutral- 
ity of operation. That was the sole object of the joint agreement em- 
bodied in the treaty of ICS50, at a tin]e when the United States could 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



481 



not have undertaken the work, but it was thought that British capi- 
tal might be enHsted in it. The agreement bound Great Britain as 
well as the United States to claim no preferential rights in any canal 
that should be constructed. This agreement failed of its purpose 
and grew obsolete by the lapse cf time. It gradually became evident 
that there was no probability of a canal being constructed by the 
Nicaragua route unless under American control alone, and it thus 
became the interest of Great Britain to give the United States a free 
hand. 

Any diplomatic reservations that were waived in this new treaty 
were absolutely without value, since Great Britain no longer enter- 
tained the thought of engaging in the canal enterprise. But having 
larger maritime interests than any other nation, she would be more 
benefited than any other by the opening of the new waterway, and 
if the United States would undertake the costl}^ work, it was the most 
obvious policy to sweep away all possible objections. 

British interest thus concurred with international courtesy in this 
new substitute for the old agreement, and both sides should be en- 
tirely satisfied. The tradition in favor of the Nicaragua route had 
come down in Congress from the days of sailing vessels and small 
steamers. The development of modern ships had required the re- 
peated enlargement of the ]jlans, and he would be a bold prophet 
wdio should attempt to fix a date for Ihe probable completion of a 
practicable w^aterway. But the removal of even one long-standing 
subject of dispute was something gained, and this new treaty was 
in itself a step in civilization. 

The English papers commenting on the message said that it was 
a remarkably good state paper, but that, the President, like the 
people, in regard to the canal, had it all hi? own way — the canal was 
to be as the Americans wanted it, ''America was for Americans," and 
the canal was to be as the States would have it. Next came the Phil- 
ippine economics: 



4S2 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



"The Republican colonial policy, Avhich was inaug-iirated with the 
passage of the Foraker act in regard to Porto Rico, is finding further 
development in the Philippines. ]\]cKinley and ''plain duty" said 
free trade for Porto Rico, but Poraker and expediency said high 
tariff. Roosevelt and ''every consideration of honor" say reciprocity 
with Cuba, but Pa}ne, Grosvenor, Oxnard and the shades of Dingley 
say high tariff. vSomething says that we should treat the dependent 
peoples in the Philippines with kindness and mercy, but the Re- 
publican members of ihe Wzys and i\Ieans Committee respond with 
a bill which gTants no favors or concessions to the poor islanders 
whose destiny is now bound up Avith that of the American nation. 

From the beginning it Avas plain that the Porto Rican act 
was intended only as a precedent. It was not so much what might 
be imported to tlie United vStatcs from that small island. Other 
spectres loomed large on the horizon — ( jiba and the Philippines. 
The Porto Rican act was framed, passed and upheld by the Supreme 
Court. It is estaljlished that the United States may pass exceptional 
laws for colonies and protectorates, converting them into separate 
customs domains, and statesmanship and the Constitution have come 
to the support of the protected beet growers and tobacco farm.ers. 
This is one of the greatest feats in the history of constructive poli- 
tics and constitudonal interpretation in the history of the American 
Republic. The protectionists did it, and they are entitled to the 
glory of it. 

We have now advanced another stage. From Porto Rico we 
have come to the Philippines, and the text of the tariff bill which 
is to apply to that distant appanage of .\nierican sovereignty has 
just come out. The Porto Rican law provided that Dingley rates 
should i)e imposed upon all articles imported into the island from 
outside places except from the United States, in which case goods 
would enter there free of duty : that imports from Porto Rico to the 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



483 



American mainland should pay 15 per cent, of the Dingley rates; 
that both sets of taxes when they were paid should be covered into 
a general fund for the sole benefit of the island; that the law should 
remain in force only until March, 1902, or until other sources of 
revenue were provided for Porto Kico. 

The Philippine bill, framed on similar lines, enacts special duties 
in a schedule prepared by ^he Insular Commission on articles im- 
ported to the islands, whether from the United States or foreign 
countries. This tariff is lower than the Dingley law, by reason of 
the obligations under which this Government stands to maintain an 
*'open door" in China and the East. Philippine productsi coming 
to the United States are to pay not 15 per cent, or any reduced rates, 
but the full Dingley charges. Only one set of these taxes, thos£ 
collected in the islands, are to go into a fund for the benefit of the 
colony. The law is to be in force not until 1902 or 1904, but in- 
definitely. 

This measure is the work of protectionist Bourbons. All prefer- 
ential features have been rejected against the advice of wiser heads 
in the party. But one weird and characteristic pro'tectionist "con- 
cession'' enters in, namely, that the Philippines shall be excepted 
from the provisions of the general law regarding the coasting trade, 
and that until January, 1905, foreign vessels may carry cargoes be- 
tween the United States and the archipelago. 

No preferences of worth were allowed, we are told on high au- 
thority, lest they come into conflict with our open-door policy in 
the East, and our course should give affront to the nations. But 
after all is it the open door that concerns the American statesmen 
of the dav? Since we must keep the tariff low in the Philippines, 
it is argued that all Europe vvould rush goods there as a half-way 
station, and reship them to the United States if we permitted this 
barbarity. Here is protectionist logic at the beginning o>f the twen- 



484 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



tieth century. It would be a sight worth witnessing if the per- 
fidious Englisliman or German, whom we are beating on his own. 
ground, would pay the freight on his goods all the way around the 
world and sell us a few cents' worth of something via the Philippines. 
What these protectionists of the Ways and Means Committee are 
looking after is not the "open door'' in China, but the closed door 
at home." 

But the President had expressed his views and there was little 
doubt that every measure recommended in his message would have 
the careful consideration of the Cabinet. 

From what was known of Theodore Roosevelt in December, 
1901, it was safe to predict that while he might bring no innova- 
tions to the exalted office he now held, as was said, he might do 
by those who little understood the man and his understanding of his 
duties; yes, he would be no figure-head of his party, nor would he 
stultify his own earnest and honest character at the behests of Sena- 
tors whose names were the synonyms of power in political leader- 
ship. Theodore Ivoosevelt vvould be himself — ^^no matter in what 
position fate placed him — and while there might be prognostications 
of his physical inability to withstand the strain of so much as he 
w^ould put upon himself to do, there need be no fear of his wavering 
or supinely accepting as his own the opinion of those round him. 
There had always been a reason for every one of his acts in what- 
soever office he held, and this reason had been the good of those 
who had placed him in power and who relied upon him to do what 
he engaged when he went into power. As President of the United 
States tiiere v/as every reason to believe that Mr. Roosevelt would 
bring into play all the high resolves of his nature, and that ''New 
America" would have in its foremost executive an able President, 
a brilliant statesman, a tactful diplomat, a determined reformer be- 
yond the cavil of critics and the censure of impure political leaders. 



PATRIOT AND STATESMAN. 



485 



It was early to predicate of his success in an office which his friends 
had prophesied he would enter in 1904, but there could be no doubt 
that he took the reins of government as the representative of a vast 
people with the firm determination to do' for the people and the 
country the best that in him lay. 



JAN 13 1902 



1:5 1902 



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